Recipe for National Muffin Day 2011

One of the best ways to celebrate today fun food holiday, "National Muffin Day," and to honor the month long focus on whole grains would be to make a whole grain chocolate muffin.  Wouldn't that be great, Sisters and Brothers?

Your Chocolate Priestess used the search feature on Foodbuzz and found a recipe I could start from.  I knew I'd need to make some adjustments but I wanted to also make sure this worked out.  You can find the original whole wheat chocolate muffin recipe from  Joseph's Grainery on their site.

First thing I needed to change was to increase the chocolate in the recipe.  That doesn't surprise you does it?  I wanted to also use mini chocolate chips called Nestle Toll House Mini Toppers because I think they blend better into the muffins better than regular sized chips plus I had bought these I found on clearance sale one day at Kroger.  Note these are semi-sweet so the darkness of the muffins starts here.

I also used more of the Double Dutch cocoa from King Arthur Flour that they sent us.  This, too, is darker cocoa so this is the second level of darkness I'm adding to the muffins.  Since the original recipe didn't specify dutched or not for the cocoa we'll see if this works but I know I'll need to add a bit more moisture over all because I'm increasing the amount of cocoa over all.  I'm also adding oatmeal so that will require more moisture.

I also have whole wheat flour but it isn't white whole wheat flour like the original.  I'm not certain if this will require enough more liquids or not but I know what a muffin batter should look like and feel like so I'll figure it out.  But it is also "National Whole Grains" month so I'm adding oatmeal as well. Does this help balance out all the extra chocolate?  Well considering I'm using other "healthier" version of many of the ingredients, I'm hoping that over all this isn't too bad of a treat for you to have.

Here's the recipe that I created via a lot of substitutions and consultation with a muffin recipe booklet I have.

TammyJo's Double Chocolate Whole Wheat Muffins
1.5 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup sugar/Splenda (1:1 variety)
1/4 cup + 1 T King Arthur Double Dutch Dark Cocoa
1tsp baking soda
1tsp baking powder
1.5 cups natural applesauce
1/2 cup melted Cisco baking stick
1/2 cup Egg Beaters
1 T white vinegar
1 T pure vanilla extract
8oz/1 cup mini chocolate chips

Mix all the dry ingredients together thoroughly, I used a fork to keep the air in the mixing by hand.  Here you can see them all in the bowl but yet unmixed.  I don't like using an electric mixer for muffins myself or for brownies usually either.

Melt the Cisco baking stick while you stir in the applesauce and Egg Beaters.  Add in the melted Cisco baking stick and mix thoroughly.  Add in vinegar and vanilla and mix well.  In this photo to the left you can see the wet ingredients all mixed in and the chips jsut waiting to be added.  It will be thick but this was enough liquid and the muffins were neither too moisture nor too dry.

Spoon into regular sized muffin pan.  I used these cute monkey liners I found on sale and had a coupon for.  Bake at 375 for 19 minutes or so -- I used the sticking toothpick method to check them.

Take out of oven and cool them.  If you leave them in the liners, they are easier to store but we noticed that that lower part was a slightly different color and tasted just a touch flourlike.  The bitterness of the dark chocolate builds up with each chew and each bite so be aware of this.  The oatmeal and the mini chips were an extra texture and burst of chocolate in several bites.  You can see I made 22 muffins in total. Some were a touch smaller but I think stretching the muffins to 24 would have made them too small over all and cutting back to 18 would have been far too big.  So I get 22, I have no problem with that.

So how are you celebrating "National Muffin Day?"