An Experiment....

Firstively, let me start by saying I know I didn't blog yesterday and yet my blog mandate clearly states that I will blog every day with a new recipe. Well, I'm changing it. I'll blog whenever I bake. That's usually at least once a day; sometimes twice, and sometimes every other day. The bottom line is this: If I only post when I bake there will be more creative and rich posts filled with pictures, stories about how I burn myself, slice fingertips off, and all that other fun stuff. Deal?

That said....

I'm attempting to post while baking this morning. It's a new recipe I'm creating on the fly for orange chocolate chip muffins. I've always felt that once you introduce chocolate into a muffin, it becomes more of a cupcake, but hey.... breakfast is breakfast!

Orange Chocolate Chip Muffins

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup brown sugar
• ¼ cup white sugar
• ½ tsp salt
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• pinch of nutmeg
• pinch of cinnamon
• 1 cup melted butter
• 2 Lg eggs
• zest and juice from 2 Lg oranges
• 1 cup chocolate chips

Method:

1. combine dry ingredients and mix well, but don't sift
2. combine wet ingredient and mix well
3. combine the dry, wet, and chocolate chips, folding just until incorporated
4. portion into lined muffin tins
5. bake @ 350° F until done (about 25 - 30 minutes)

How it all went down:

The kitchen smells like burnt orange now, but I'll get to that a little later....

Depending on the size of recipe, I usually use a fork or whisk to uniformly blend dry ingredients together. Not necessarily what the tool was designed for, but it works well.

Even though it costs a little more, I always try to use free range and/or organic eggs in my recipes. Once incorporated into baked goods, I don't think there's a real difference in taste but it still makes a difference ethically. The eggs I'm using today however are neither free range or organic, but do have a higher level of omega 3 fatty acids due to the diet of the chicken. It's my first time using these eggs and I'm not sure how I feel about it. If the recipe flops, I'll be sure to look in their direction first.

I got a micro-plane for Christmas. Aside from my french knife, it's probably one of the most used pieces of equipment in my portable kitchen. It's pretty grate. :-)


It already smells good.


For muffins with berries or chocolate chips in them, I often mix the dry and wet part way, then add the fruit or chocolate, and then complete the combining process. This way everything gets mixed evenly without creating those evil gluten strands. (Evil to muffins, anyway)

Into the oven to bake for 30 minutes and.... the tops collapsed. :-(


I think I portioned to much into each muffin cup and they couldn't hold their own structure. Some of the edge muffins even spilled over the side creating the lovely burnt orange smell I mentioned earlier.

The most important thing, of course, is the taste.... which in this case is phenomenal. I'll surely make these again, but also fully intend to mess around with the amounts of leavening agents, portion size, and oven temperature. I like my muffin to have a nice crested top, not some crazy plateau. In the meantime if anybody in blog-land decides to try fixing this recipe or has other ideas, feel free to suggest something.