Chocolate Chip Muffins with Nutella and Creamy Peanut Butter

Thank you for dropping by and read my humble blog! It is really heart warming to receive feedback from a friend who now wanted to dig out her baking 'barang-barang' and start baking again after reading my blog. Do share with me your baking experience and let us learn together! :) Speaking from a very novice baker's point of view, I always recommend my friends who have not baked before but inspired to bake now, to start with a simple and easy project i.e baking muffins.


Muffins are very healthy snacks for kids. They are easy to make because the main tips of muffins baking are 'do not overmix' which means it saves a lot of work and 'do not overbake' which means time saving! Hmm sounds like those Quality Improvement project that I used to run previously!

Muffins belongs to quick bread family like biscuits, scones, waffles, pancakes etc. There are 2 mixing techniques for muffins i.e the two mixing bowls methods or creaming method. Check out this site for more information about quick bread - muffins. It is a good practice to read and find out more information before you venture into a baking project.

I got the basic muffins making recipe from Everyday Food Magazines, May 2008 by Martha Stewart. The original recipe used the 2 bowls mixing method. However, I am more used to the creaming method so I just followed my heart!


This is a fool proofed recipe and you can do a lot of variations for the add-ins like chocolate chips, nuts, seeds, berries, vegetables, cheese etc without changing the measurement of other ingredients. I chose to add in the chocolate chips as I just bought one and the balance is still sitting in the fridge now. Also I thought I should be more experimental this time by adding in the nutella and creamy peanut butter for the fillings which the original recipe never called for.

The chocolate chip muffins with nutella filling tasted so good as the nutella flavour blended in so well with the chips. The muffins are soft and buttery but not dense.

I like especially the crust on top of the muffins. It gave you that kind of umph when you bite a chunk of it....Yummy!!


However, this was not the case for the muffins with creamy peanut butter. The cake texture did not change generally but the overall bites were not satisfying as the peanut butter was very sticky and the flavour just don't blend in with the whole cake and the chips. Won't be baking this next time.

Ever since the first bake of this chocolate chip muffins, I have memorised the recipe by hard. It is worthwhile storing this recipe in your memory bank and you will know why in my next few posts which are on muffins also!

CHOCOLATE CHIP MUFFINS WITH NUTELLA & PEANUT BUTTER

Ingredients

(Make 12)
220g Self Raising Flour
½ tsp of salt
170g unsalted butter (soften)
140g castor sugar
2 eggs lightly bitten
120ml full cream milk
½ tsp pure vanilla essence
165g semi sweet mini chocolate-chip or about a cup

Fillings:
Nutella
Creamy peanut butter

Method

1. Sift flour together with salt and put aside.

2. Grease the muffin tray and line the muffin tray with the muffin cases. Preheat the oven at 190deg C. Baking time 20 -25 min

3. Mix butter with sugar until creamy, pale and fluffy about 5-7 minutes using the electronic mixer at high speed.

4. Lower the speed to medium and add one egg at a time and continue to beat until it is well incorporated. Add in another egg and vanilla essensse. Continue to beat until it is well incorporated.

5. Add in flour and milk alternately in three portions until finished. Do not over mix.

6. Add in chocolate-chips in 2-3 portions and fold the batter.

7. Fill the muffin casing about 1/3 full and add in a teaspoon of nutella for six muffin cases. Cover up with another 1/3 of the batter.

8. Do likewise for the other 6 muffin cases but fill them up with creamy peanut butter this time.

Notes :
1. I am using Hershey mini chocolate chips.
2. The measurement given for the sugar is a reduced amount from the original recipe which is 170g. I decided not to use too much sugar. You may add sugar if you wish the muffins to be a little sweeter.
3. You may add in other suitable flavoured milk if you wish.
4. Another variation is you can put the nutella on top of the batter and swirl it with a tooth pick before putting into the oven. I will try doing this next time.
5. You may change the milk to low fat milk or by simply adding half water to half of the full cream milk to make it as 2% milk.
6. For all the recipes in this blog, I will try to simplify from the originals.

Recipe fram Everyday Food Magazine, May 2008