Chocolate Chip Muffins

After returning home from working a 9PM to 7AM shift at the hospital, I decided to try my hand at making some chocolate chip muffins before heading to bed.  I had come across a basic muffin recipe on Allrecipes.com that had received some pretty good reviews.  Muffins have always been kind of tricky for me.  I don't have a very light hand when it comes to mixing the ingredients and there's just something about having a lumpy batter with visible chunks of still-dry flour that kind of irks me.  I know the secret to a good muffin is to mix as little as possible.  I know the batter is meant to be lumpy.  I've learned as much watching Alton Brown on Good Eats.

Best Ever Muffins - From Allrecipes.com
Yields: 12 servings

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cups white sugar - I used a little less because I was adding chocolate chips
1 egg
1 cup milk - I used skim milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil - I used 1/4 cup applesauce
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (I preheated to 425 degrees F based on a reader review and turned it down to 400 degrees F once the muffins were in the oven to try and create the dome effect).

Stir together the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar in a large bowel.  Make a well in the center.  In a small bowl or 2-cup measuring cup, beat egg with a fork.  Stir in milk and oil.  Pour all at once into the well in the flour mixture.  Mix quickly and lightly with a fork until moistened, but do not beat.  The batter will be lumpy.  Pour batter into paper lined muffin pan cups (I just sprayed my muffin tin with non-stick cooking spray instead of using cups).

Bake for 25 minutes, or until golden (I baked mine for 15 minutes as recommended in a few of the reviews).

The muffins came out pretty good.  They sure weren't hockey pucks, which is always a plus!  I don't know if it was my mixing, but the outer crust of the muffin bottom seemed to have a chewy texture.  The muffin top itself was quite yummy and had a nice crunch to it just coming out of the oven.  Another thing I noticed about this recipe is that it is listed as being enough to make 12 regular-sized muffins, but I found that there was only enough batter to fill each muffin cup to about 2/3 full and the end result was rather skimpy little muffins.  When I make muffins, I like to be able to fill the cups to the top so that I have more of a muffin top to munch on when the muffins are done.  All in all, I'd use this basic muffin recipe again in the future and try my hand at a few other variations (blueberries, raisins, dried cranberries, etc.).

I'll remember to take pictures next time! :)