
Easy to whip together and perfect for breakfast.
Baking Adventures In A Messy Kitchen
A blog about healthy baking, with occasional dips into decadence.
Why are these called Chocolate Cupcake-Muffins? Because they are muffins, and they are cupcakes, and they are delicious. They can be eaten for breakfast or for dessert. They can be eaten plain, or with peanut butter, or with whipped cream frosting. They are made with healthy ingredients like quinoa flour and yogurt, but also required the melting of butter and the adding of cocoa powder. Hence: cupcake-muffins.
Mini Chocolate Doughnut Muffins for a snow day, that’s what these were. The kids went back to school on January 2nd, and by the 3rd they already had a day off, thanks to an insane amount of snow. We seized the moment, slept in, and then it was time for breakfast. I decided to skip the glaze so these not-unhealthy treats wouldn’t venture into dessert territory.
These weren’t JUST particularly spectacular cookies.
Yes, being Chocolate Coconut Espresso Cookies, they were destined to be delicious, and when I swapped out the chocolate chips for cappuccino chips they went all the way to sublime. But these were special cookies — not in an afterschool special kind of way — because I made them for The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap
It was a beautiful, perfect, delicious bread, and a perfectly wonderful baking day. I had guest bakers! Meet Tracy and Antonia. Left to my own devices, I would have reduced or eliminated the chocolate chips, but Antonia & Tracy are huge chocolate fans and I wanted them to leave with their taste buds singing.
These were a lovely surprise.
I hadn’t done a banana-bran combination before. Well, sort of. I’d tried these Banana-Nut Oat Bran Muffins but that was oat bran instead of wheat bran and they didn’t have real flour in them and while some people liked them, I wouldn’t make them again. So they don’t count.
But I had some brown bananas sitting around, even after making my Chai Spiced Banana Muffins, and I had a hankering for something new. I also had some buttermilk to use up, and liked that this recipe looked pretty healthy but still adaptable, plus it looked like I’d get some mini muffins out of the deal as well, which are always fun.
My mission: almond butter.
Why? Because my friend (and former co-worker) Tracy wanted something with almond butter, and she waited patiently week after week as I churned out muffin after muffin, loaf after loaf, all almond butter-free. Tracy has been the most loyal of baking fans and makes me feel like everything that comes out of my kitchen is a gift, so when I saw this recipe for Peanut Butter Pumpkin Bread with Chocolate Chips, I fought my peanut butter-loving instincts and decided to make the swap and grant my chocolate-and-pumpkin-loving friend her much-deserved wish.
Redemption.
The last two baked goods that came out of my kitchen were substandard, for sure. Not enough flavor, heavy, arduous texture, and especially disappointing because one came right on the heels of the other. But today things turned around at last, courtesy of these lovely. fluffy, flavor-filled orange mocha muffins.
This recipe called out to me but it took a while for me to heed the call.
First of all, it was based on a recipe by Marcus Samuelsson, whose memoir Yes, Chef was a recent and engaging, fascinating, inspiring, and delicious read. I’ve never tried any of his recipes before, and I had actually pinned this one a few weeks ago. But then I saw this version of it, which seemed to preserve the general nature of it but healthed it up a bit, finding alternatives to the sugar (which I would simply have reduced) as well as the oil.
Pretty, they’re not.
Delicious, they are. And then some. They’re bursting with chocolate and coconut with just a touch of cinnamon, and not a whisper of zucchini hits the taste buds. Amazing.
I confess that I was very, very nervous while I was making them. I changed so many elements of this recipe that I had no idea if I was going to be elated by success or depressed by failure, and then have to go hungry as well. But sometimes a baker has to take a few chances.
Ignore the word “skinny”. Really. Because these taste anything but skinny. They taste FAT in the most delightful way. Fat with chocolate flavor. Fat with cakey texture. Fat with desserty joy.
And yet they are skinny too. Low fat, Weight Watchers-friendly, and full of healthy ingredients like wheat germ, yogurt, bananas, and whole wheat white flour. They have chocolate chips too, of course, but that’s okay. It’s all about balance. And deliciousness. These muffins have that in abundance.
Finally!
This delicious, satisfying chocolate zucchini bread came on the heels of two very unfortunate baking experiments, and a last-minute mishap to boot.
Failure #1: I tried to make a zucchini bread without chocolate chips or cocoa powder. Now I know that it’s possible to make a good spiced zucchini bread, but the recipe I tried did not generate one.
These muffins are wonderful. The amount of chocolate chips was just right, the sweetness balanced beautifully with the spices, the crumb was soft and fluffy, and the zucchini provided moisture and nutrition without ever rearing its ugly head into the flavor. A gem, this one. I feel like these muffins are helping me slowly inch towards a zucchini bread without cocoa powder. Perhaps I am beginning to understand the powers of the humble zucchini
Flower muffin! I was out of breakfast muffins and needed to whip something together that looked easy and quick, and this fit the bill: Buttermilk Oatmeal Muffins. The chocolate chips came from me. First I had to soak the oats in buttermilk for half an hour, which gave me enough time to clear some more […]
I thought I had the banana muffin market cornered, but these are just as good as mine and come in mini form! The recipe for these mini banana chocolate chip muffins had unusual instructions, and specific directions, and I obeyed all with success. I changed a few things in the recipe, and got great results: a moist, flavorful, fun mini muffin, popular with all who tasted.
I have tasted the magnificence that is a “skinny” double chocolate chip muffin, and I’ve personally witnessed all the ingredients that went into them. I alone can vouch for the seemingly impossible truth: these healthy muffins taste like decadent brownies. For real. And I’ve already made them twice, so I know it wasn’t just a fluke.
jump to recipe I won’t pretend they’re pretty, but they sure are delicious. This is a grown-up sort of muffin. The espresso flavor is strong, the oats give the muffins a density that makes them nice and filling, and the only real sweetness comes from the chips. So don’t make these for kids and expect […]
jump to recipe Yesterday, I played with my tried-and-true banana yogurt muffin recipe to see if I could add in some cocoa powder without ruining it. I’ve also been playing with my camera. My photography class started yesterday, and I got cocky and started shooting on manual, which turned out to be something of a […]
I’ve made these before — they’re Dave’s favorites. But I made them again, with some small alterations, because the kids have both just had ear infections and they felt these would help. And why not? The tricky part, though, is that Juliet doesn’t really like chocolate chips. She likes chocolate kisses, or chocolate that comes […]
I’ve made these before, but this time I added a twist. I made them at Christmas, and instead of using regular chocolate chips I used Christmas-colored red & green chips, but this time I really took these to another level flavor-wise by substituting half of the chocolate chips for cappuccino chips, freshly arrived from the […]
jump to recipe These are insane. Now they’re not crazily low fat or anything, but they’re not anywhere near as decadent as they taste, and the flavor combination in these muffins is absolutely exquisite. Semi-sweet chocolate, turbinado sugar, espresso powder, and a hint of orange come together to create some sort of flavor perfection that […]
jump to recipe Let me just put this out there right away: this picture does not do this loaf justice. The how-to-use-your-new-DSL-camera class doesn’t start until April, so I’m still using the automatic setting, and I baked at night, so there was no natural light to work with. So understand that the dark blob you […]
Nathaniel requested an insane cake for his birthday party. He didn’t say “devil’s food cake”, but he knew exactly what he wanted. “A chocolate cake, with chocolate frosting, and I want layers, and I want it shaped like a rectangle.” Layered rectangles? It’s not like we invited 50 kids to this thing, I think we’ll […]
Dave doesn’t usually express a strong baking opinion, but tonight he asked for something that didn’t have pumpkin, but did have chocolate. I didn’t exactly come up with something Weight Watchers-friendly, but sometimes one must make sacrifices, especially where peanut butter and chocolate are concerned. Also, it looked like a fun recipe to make. I […]
So while the Banana Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Singles were baking or cooling or in various states of I’m-not-sure-if-these-will-work-out, I started working on my back-up plan. I’d seen this recipe on Pinterest a while ago, and I loved the idea of chocolate and cloves, plus I liked that it looked a little weird in the picture. […]
This has been a very strange evening. I don’t usually skip ahead to the end of my baking tales, but really, I was ready to give up on these weird oatmeal singles muffiny thingles completely, until Dave and Nathaniel each gobbled one up with glee. And then about ten minutes later, when I asked Dave […]
Things don’t always go well in baking. Sometimes, you just learn about what doesn’t work, and move on. And that’s today’s lesson. Oops. I didn’t bake last night, I went to some crazy “Restore The Core” class instead. It wasn’t exactly a mistake, but I won’t be going back. I felt good for having done […]
I decided there were more chocolate zucchini recipes out there worth trying. So I tried one. I admit I am a little distracted today. In addition, we had our summer outing at work today, so I spent the afternoon on a boat cruising around Manhattan. It was actually quite lovely, with wonderful views of the […]
As Nathaniel & Juliet would sing, “It’s the final countdown…” All week I have been using my colleagues at work as guinea pigs. They tasted, they described, they compared and contrasted. They weighed the issues: kids have to like them, they can’t be too messy, they need to appeal to the widest variety of tastes, […]
read about Night 1 read about Night 2 Tonight was the last night of true experimentation. Whatever I make tomorrow goes to the kids at St. Philip’s Academy for Read It All Up®, and that’s that. But tonight I went back to the site where I found the extremely delicious recipe for Secretly Healthy Chocolate […]
Most people who know me know of my hatred of cooked vegetables. Unless you count corn and potatoes, which are more like starches, I don’t eat any cooked vegetables at all, ever. Oh, Dave sometimes purees some carrots and sneaks them into the spaghetti sauce, and I make carrot oatmeal muffins, but that’s really as […]
(for Dad’s birthday) jump to recipe So my Dad’s birthday is on Monday, and I can’t be there to celebrate with him, so I’m sending coconut. My Dad loves coconut. I wanted to make him something fun with fluffy coconut frosting, but (a) I couldn’t give Mark & Linus something delicate to carry along with […]
I’m not sure which I’m happier about: conquering a recipe with (liquid) coffee in it, or finally managing to successfully dust something with powdered sugar without having it look hilarious, like a 4-year-old did it. Both feel like long-awaited accomplishments, and both resulted in deliciousness. A long time ago, years before I was baking anything […]
jump to recipe Nathaniel, unsurprisingly, is a Star Wars fan. And Nathaniel owns a very entertaining book called The Star Wars Cookbook. No, really, he does. We’ve made Wookie Cookies before, but this time Nathaniel really wanted the Bossk Brownies. I’ve had some bad experiences with brownies, but I decided to give it a go. […]
Juliet likes peanut butter again! She wanted me to bake something with peanut butter, but I wasn’t in a cookie-making mood, what with all the pans going in and out every ten minutes and the fact that I’d just finished doing all the dinner dishes. Tomorrow I’ll make cookies, but today I wanted something that […]
(requested by Nathaniel) Sometimes an 8-year-old boy just wants a straightforward treat. “Chocolate chip cookies,” he said. “Big ones, though…not like the little ones you usually make.” It’s true, I am guilty of making my cookies small, because then they contain fewer Weight Watchers points. Of course that strategy only works if you don’t eat […]
(and other baked goods) It’s Mother’s Day, so I’m allowed to bake as much as I want, right? Last night I made the carrot oatmeal muffins again as well as the low-fat gingerbread, and then started off today with mini pancake maple muffins. Once I got those cleaned up, I whipped up some more lemon […]
Maple Pancake Mini-Muffins (from Bakerella) I make these almost every weekend for the kids. This was probably the first recipe that set off my love of Pinterest; I saw it posted there and realized there was a whole world of amazing baked goods worth discovering. The idea is so smart: pancakes for breakfast that are […]
I’m exhausted, but I wanted a treat, and I didn’t want to feel crappy about indulging. For that, this is my go-to recipe. These muffins are incredibly easy to whip together in almost no time, and they always taste fantastic. Good texture, strong chocolate flavor, boosted by a little espresso powder. It’s a very basic […]
. . .with White Chocolate Chips and Cream Cheese Blobs It’s supposed to be a cream cheese swirl, but I am esthetically challenged when it comes to baked goods. I can make things that taste wonderful, but none of them look all that terrific, and some look downright scary. My treats are designed for deeper […]
Copyright © 2022 · Quattro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in