Black And White Cookie Muffins!
When I was living in Spain I took a day trip to Figueres to see the Dali Museum. While waiting in the enormous line, in the rain, I suddenly became really hangry. I took a little walk and discovered a sad pastry shop that happily had one offering that caught my eye, a muffin that was half chocolate and half vanilla! Why haven't I seen that before? Why doesn’t everyone make half and half muffins? So, the first thing I did was text Alana Kysar and exclaim “WE NEED TO PERFECT THE HALF AND HALF MUFFIN”, and here we are!
We used the Blueberry Muffin recipe from Smitten kitchen as our base and tailored it to suit our black and white vision- a little more sugar, a little more fat and a whole lot more chocolate!
You’ll notice in the recipe the ingredients are “divided”. Why, you might ask? Because it’s incredibly easy to overmix muffin batter, so instead of making a vanilla batter, dividing it in half and adding the cocoa, we found that it was much easier to get the right muffin texture if the ingredients were just halved from the get-go. We know it’s a couple more dishes to clean but if you want super moist muffins, with a great crumb and an ideal crunchy sugary top, sometimes you have to wash two extra mixing bowls. We hope you love it!
INGREDIENTS:
4 tablespoons neutral oil, divided
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and divided
½ cup sugar, divided
½ cup light brown sugar, divided
1 cup sour cream, divided
4 tablespoons whole milk, divided
2 large eggs, divided
2 teaspoons vanilla extract, divided
2 teaspoons baking powder, divided
½ teaspoon baking soda, divided
½ teaspoon fine kosher salt or sea salt, divided
2 cups all-purpose flour, divided
¼ cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon instant espresso powder
⅓ cup semi-sweet chocolate, chopped or discs (no chips)
4 tablespoons turbinado or demerara sugar, divided
LET’S COOK:
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grab a muffin tin and fill each cup with a liner or spray with nonstick cooking spray.
In two large bowls, evenly divide the oil, butter, sugar, brown sugar, sour cream, whole milk, eggs and vanilla and whisk to combine.
In two smaller bowls, evenly divide the baking powder, baking soda, salt and flour and whisk to combine.
Whisk the cocoa powder and instant espresso powder into one of the two bowls.
Gently fold the cocoa dry ingredients into one of the wet bowls, until it’s just combined then fold in the chopped chocolate (or chocolate discs).
Fold the second bowl of dry ingredients into the other bowl of wet ingredients until just combined.
When scooping the batter into the muffin tins, you want to scoop the vanilla on one side of the cup and the chocolate on the other - if you have a scoop with a thumb lever that is the easiest tool to use, but if not you can use large spoons. Start with the vanilla and scoop a heaping ¼ cup into each cup focusing on one side then repeat with a scoop of the chocolate on the other side.
Bang the pan a few times to settle the batter.
Sprinkle the muffins with the turbinado (or demerara) sugar and bake until they’re set and a toothpick can be pushed through the vanilla side and come out clean, around 25-35 minutes. Start checking if they’re done after 20 minutes.
Cool for 10 minutes in the pan before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely before serving. They will keep for 2 to 3 days, but are best the day they are baked.
[10 MUFFINS]