dark chocolate and raspberry muffins

dark chocolate and raspberry muffins

• 8 Mar 2021

I don't make muffins very often but when I saw some dark chocolate raspberry muffins on Instagram, I decided to make a batch. These muffins were inspired by the dark chocolate and raspberry muffin recipe from The Bourke Street Bakery Cookbook. That recipe is loaded with butter and sugar so I turned to my favourite Ottolenghi Muffin recipe and decided to adapt it to make the muffins.

I used some wholemeal flour in the recipe but my wholemeal flour was very high in fibre so after I sifted it, I used 1-2 tbs of the bran left in the sieve and tossed the rest. You might find you'll need a bit more buttermilk if your wholemeal flour is similarly high in fibre. As raspberries are so expensive at the moment I used frozen raspberries. They work out fine but they do break apart during the mixing process, discolouring the batter a little. Don't worry as it all works out well in the end.

Here's the recipe for you which makes 12 small muffins. I used the Le Creuset tin 12 cup muffin tray from Everten. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

Dark Chocolate and Raspberry Muffins, adapted From Ottolenghi: The Cookbook
Ingredients
200g plain flour
75g wholemeal flour
2½ tsp baking powder
Pinch salt
1 large egg
200 g caster sugar
75 g unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
190 ml buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla extract
175g raspberries, fresh or frozen
150 g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
raw sugar for sprinkling and icing sugar to dust

Method
Preheat the oven to 180°C /350°C. Line a 12-cup muffin pan with paper cases.

 
In a medium bowl sift together the flours, baking powder and salt and set aside. 

In a large mixing bowl, lightly whisk together the egg, sugar and melted butter. Whisk in the buttermilk and the vanilla. Add the sifted dry ingredients and fold together very gently. When about half the dry ingredients are properly folded in, add the raspberries and chocolate and continue to fold in. Make sure you stir the batter just enough to combine; it should remain lumpy and rough. 

Spoon the mixture into the muffin cases to fill them up. Sprinkle with raw sugar. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the centre of a muffin comes out clean. Dust with icing sugar once cooled.

Remove the muffins from the pan while still warm and serve immediately or cool completely and freeze in individual ziplock bags for breakfast on the run. The raspberries make the muffin super moist and they are delicious still warm from the oven as the chocolate is all melty.

These muffins are pretty special. I took some into work then shared the rest with my neighbours. A work colleague asked for the recipe and my next door neighbour stopped me on the stairs to tell me how the great the muffins were. High praise indeed. 

 

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen. 

 

Bye for now, 

 

Jillian