Mini-muffin modifications added below on October 29, 2012. Enjoy!

I don’t remember what precipitated the discussion, but somehow it came to my attention via dh that dd really wanted to have chocolate chip muffins for breakfast. We’ve taken to keeping the Entemann’s Chocolate Chip Mini-Muffins in the house, mostly because they’re easy to whip out if you need a quick breakfast on-the-go, and ds has taken to them like a fish to water. But dd hasn’t really fallen in love with them, and she wanted a WHOLE muffin that she could eat…well, whole…rather than four small muffins that had more the appearance of a snack than a single baked good.

Poking around in our cookbooks, I noted the distinct lack of a specific “chocolate chip muffin” recipe, although I did find a banana chocolate chip one that would’ve worked great – had dd not turned her nose up just the other day when presented with a banana chocolate chip muffin purchased from the farmstand. Fine. I’ll bake them myself. On a really hot day. Don’t go handing me a “Mother of the Year” award just yet; we have central air conditioning. On second thought, go for it: I followed baking these with whipping up a batch of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (because I’m a good wife sometimes, too).

SO. INCREDIBLY. GOOD.

A note: this recipe was inspired by a recipe that I found in a cookbook. If you want the full cookbook, please, by all means, go buy it. It’s awesome. I will be attempting further mods on this recipe sometime soon, with fewer chocolate chips (because dh thinks there were too many – and I think that’s just NUTS) and using some vegan mods, like darker chocolate, applesauce for at least one of the eggs and margarine for the butter. When I get around to testing the other mods, I’ll post if it all works out nicely.

Prep Time: 15-20 min

Cooking Time: 30 min

Serves: 12 (1 muffin per person)

Ingredients

1 stick butter (should be 4 oz)

1 cup sugar

1/2 tsp salt

2 large eggs

2 tsp baking powder

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1/2 cup skim milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

1-1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

1/8 cup mini chocolate chips

Make it Happen

1. Preheat the oven to 375F.

2. In a mixer, cream together the butter, sugar, salt and vanilla.

3. Add the eggs singly, beating well after each is added to the bowl.

4. While the mixer is going on low speed, add the baking powder, and then alternate adding 1/3 of the flour and 1/3 of the milk until all the flour and milk have been added to the bowl.

5. Turn off the mixer, then add the semi-sweet (regular size) chocolate chips to the bowl. Stir well to combine.

6. Put a muffin liner into each of 12 cups in a muffin pan, then scoop the batter into each of the muffin liners. You should have enough to fill each one fairly full (and it’s okay if it’s all the way up to the top).

7. Garnish each muffin with a sprinkling of the mini chocolate chips, then put the muffins into the oven.

8. Bake for 30 minutes, or until a tester inserted into the center two muffins comes out clean.

9. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then remove the muffins from the pan and place on a cooling rack to complete the cooling process.

New! MINI-MUFFIN MODIFICATIONS!

JOY in bite-sized form factor!

Using the same set of ingredients, you can make 48 mini-muffins. In theory, it still makes about 12 servings of 4 mini-muffins each. How you observe this serving size in reality…I leave up to you.

To make these as mini-muffins, follow instructions 1-5 (above) and then fill 48 mini-muffin cups with the batter. If not using mini-muffin liners, just spray the pans with a baking spray before filling the cups.

Bake for 20 minutes. If you have two 24-mini-muffin pans, as I do, put them on separate racks and swap them halfway through cooking time.

No need to cool these in the pan before moving them to the cooling rack; simply turn them out onto a cooling rack, let them cool a bit and then try not to eat them all in single bites.

It’s very, very hard not to eat these in single bites. Really.