Both for a cozy family tea party and for a festive dessert idea, chocolate muffins are the best. Economical and very tasty cakes can be prepared in several versions, decorated differently for each type of product and get rave reviews from guests or household members. And you will have to spend about 30 minutes, or a little more if you also make a decor cream.
What you need to know about chocolate muffins
Despite the simplicity of the recipe and the availability of all ingredients, there are subtleties that can significantly affect the result. Dessert pastries include butter, milk, cocoa, the quality of which determines the taste of the final product. In addition, berries can be added to the dough.
There are several important rules for making chocolate muffins so that they turn out to be truly delicious:
- You don't need to beat the ingredients. They are kneaded by hand (with a spoon, spatula), but to speed up the process, it is permissible to use a mixer with a nozzle for making dough. The rise during baking and the air structure of the cake is obtained as a result of the use of baking powder.
- When adding frozen berries to cherry and chocolate muffins, do not thaw them ahead of time. The fruits will lose their juice, and the pastry will turn out to be too wet.
- Muffins are usually baked in special paper forms. They do not need to be lubricated, and removed from the products after baking. In corrugated paper forms, the cake is both stored and served on the table. If there is a set of small metal molds (as for cupcakes), then they need to be treated with oil and dusted with flour. For silicone products, only the bottom is lubricated to get a convex rounded top of the cake.
- To get a rich chocolate color of the dough, you need to use not cocoa, but melted chocolate.
- It is better to buy good cocoa powder, produced by the Rossiya factory or the Babaevsky enterprise.
- As a baking powder, you need to use a purchased mixture. In the absence of such, baking powder is used, which is easy to make on your own. To do this, mix in equal proportions dry soda and citric acid powder. You need to store homemade baking powder in a carefully closed jar and take it only with a dry spoon so that the substances do not begin to react with each other ahead of time. When baking muffins, in no case should you extinguish soda with vinegar.
If the recipe includes chocolate chips, you can use chocolate drops. This is a thermostable product that will retain its shape during baking. Shavings or caribe crumbs are also suitable as a filler. In the absence of the opportunity to buy special chocolate fillers, the easiest way is to crumble a bar of dark chocolate.
How to make muffins with your own hands?
The technology of kneading dough and baking seems complicated only at a very cursory glance. In fact, there are absolutely no difficulties in making muffins. The main requirement is to mix liquid and dry ingredients separately. This helps to retain carbon dioxide, which forms many small and evenly distributed bubbles in the dough.
Like any American recipe, the classic way implies that any housewife can cook pastries. It is better to turn on the oven in advance so that it warms up to 200-220ºС. You will need:
- sugar - 100 g;
- flour - 200 g;
- baking powder - 2 tsp;
- cocoa - 2-3 tablespoons;
- vanilla sugar (1 tsp) or crystalline vanillin (at the tip of a knife);
- chicken eggs - 3 pcs.;
- butter - 70 g;
- milk - 70 ml.
The butter must first be melted to a liquid state (in the microwave or on the stove). Whisk the eggs with a fork, mixing the white and yolk. Then add milk and butter and mix.
Separately mix flour, sugar, cocoa and baking powder. Immediately add the chocolate chips. Pour the egg-butter mix into the prepared dry mixture and quickly mix the dough.
You should get a fairly thick, but not elastic mass. Divide the dough into small molds, filling them no more than 2/3 of the volume. Put in the oven for 10-12 minutes. Readiness can be determined with a dry wooden skewer, but with a preheated oven, this time is usually enough.
The number of cakes that will be obtained from this set of products is 10-15 pieces, depending on the size of the molds. The standard muffin diameter is about 7 cm. The weight depends on the set of products and the method of baking: the liquid filling makes the dessert heavier. It is not rational to make a lot of cakes and store them, as they quickly become stale. For home tea drinking, it is easier to bake them immediately before serving and cool if you need to decorate with cream.
Chocolate muffins with fruit fillings
The combination of fruit and chocolate is always very interesting. Instead of cherries, other seasonal berries (strawberries, red or black currants, garden honeysuckle, shadberry, small sweet grapes, etc.) can be added to the recipe below. In winter, you can use candied fruits or dried fruits and dates, as well as frozen berries.
To make Cherry Chocolate Muffins, you will need the following:
- flour - 200 g;
- sugar - 100 g;
- baking powder - 2 tsp;
- chocolate - 80 g;
- egg - 1 pc.;
- butter - 50 g;
- milk - 200 ml;
- pitted cherries - 100 g.
Melt chocolate with butter in a water bath or in a microwave oven. Let cool slightly and start mixing dry ingredients. Put the egg into the cooled chocolate and mix with a spoon or spatula.
Prepare the cherries: so that the fruits are evenly distributed in the dough, they must be sprinkled with flour or starch. 1 tbsp will be enough. any of these substances. You just need to pour the flour on the berries, and then shake the bowl several times.
Pour the chocolate mixture into the dry mixture and stir. Pour in the berries and with a few movements of the spoon combine them with the dough. Distribute the mass into molds, sprinkle with sugar on top and bake in a preheated oven (200ºС) for 18-20 minutes.
You need to cool the dessert directly in silicone molds. Ready-made chocolate muffins with cherries can be decorated with powdered sugar or a chocolate net.
banana muffins
Unusually delicious banana muffins. The aroma of these fruits complements the taste of chocolate very well. A simple recipe for chocolate muffins is unlikely to leave anyone indifferent.
A large banana should be mashed with a fork into crumbs and mixed with eggs (2 pcs.) And melted butter (80-100 g). Pour in yogurt (250 g, banana flavored).
Separately mix 300 g flour, 200 g sugar, 1 tbsp. baking powder and 2-3 tbsp. l cocoa. Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry mixture and knead the dough. Bake according to general principles (200ºС, 12-15 minutes), then cool and remove from molds.
Dessert for chocolate lovers
Sometimes you want the dessert not only to have a chocolate taste, but also contain pieces of your favorite treat. To do this, they came up with thermostable droplets that will not melt and mix with the dough if you cook chocolate muffins with chocolate pieces. You can replace them with large pieces of dark or bitter chocolate, which also does not melt very well in dough products.
Making muffins at home so that they look like your favorite cafe dessert (with an increased amount of chocolate) is also easy. For chocolate muffins with chocolate you need:
- sugar - 60 g;
- flour - 120 g;
- cocoa - 1 tablespoon;
- baking powder - 1 tsp;
- chocolate - 100 g;
- milk - 50 ml;
- egg - 1 pc.;
- oil - 70 g.
I cook in the same way as usual, mixing the dry ingredients separately, and then pouring in the liquid part. There is only 1 nuance in this recipe: part of the chocolate (30 g) must be melted with butter and then mixed with egg and milk, and the main amount (70 g) should be broken into pieces no less than 1 cm in size. The prepared pieces are mixed with the dry part of the dough pieces.
When combining the liquid and dry mixture, hard crumbs will be evenly distributed in the dough mass. A delicacy is baked at 180-200ºС for 20-25 minutes.
How to make liquid filling?
This is one of the most chocolate desserts. It will take 200 g of good dark chocolate (at least 75% cocoa) to prepare it. In addition, you will need:
- 100 g of oil;
- 2 eggs;
- 3 yolks;
- 70 g of sugar;
- 60 g flour;
- a pinch of salt.
Melt chocolate with butter in a water bath. Cool slightly and mix with eggs and yolks. Mix the flour with sugar and salt, pour the chocolate mass into it and knead the dough. Bake for 7-10 minutes in an oven preheated to 220ºС. The secret of the liquid filling is that at a high temperature the surfaces will bake quickly, and the middle of the cakes will only warm up a little, retaining a delicate structure. These muffins should be served hot, so it is better to cook them in paper forms.
Muffins on kefir with chocolate chips
For those who keep themselves in shape and count the number of calories in food, a recipe without oil is suitable. If you take fat-free kefir, the calorie content of the dessert will be slightly lower than in traditional versions. For richness of taste, you can make muffins with chocolate chips from a bar containing at least 15% cocoa.
Combine 70 g of sugar with 1 egg, pour in kefir (0.5 cups), mix until smooth. Separately, make a dry mixture of 1 cup flour, 3 tbsp. cocoa and ¼ tsp. soda (do not quench, as kefir acid will react with soda right in the dough). Grate 50 g of chocolate there (you can take ready-made shavings or crumbs). Combine the liquid and dry parts, arrange into molds. Bake at 180ºC for 20 minutes.
Having learned how to bake muffins on her own, chocolate or regular, with or without fillings, the hostess gets the opportunity to quickly treat her loved ones to something unusual. Having tried several recipes, you can choose the one that works best, and then vary only the toppings for it. And if you also pick up a good cream that can be applied to the top of the cake, then on a holiday you won’t have to rack your brains or waste time on exotic desserts.
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