chocolate muffins

Nagi Maehashi’s chocolate muffins combine cocoa with baking chocolate chips. This selected preparation uses Dutch-process cocoa, dark chips, brown sugar, canola oil and sour cream, with the offered instant coffee included.

Flour, baking soda and salt are sifted together. In a separate bowl, cocoa and the selected coffee dissolve in hot full-fat milk before sugar, oil, egg, sour cream and vanilla are mixed through.

The same flour mixture joins the chocolate mixture, followed by most of the same chocolate chips. The remaining chips are reserved for the tops after the batter is divided between paper muffin cases.

The muffins begin baking at the higher oven setting, then finish at the lower setting. They rest briefly in their tin before cooling further on a rack; these are two stages of the same bake.

The author describes moist, tender centres with crisp domed tops and chocolate flavour intensified by Dutch-process cocoa and the selected coffee. Her yogurt, natural-cocoa and reheated-muffin suggestions are separate choices.