One of the joys of living and traveling all over the world is finding new ingredients to try. This week’s Muffin Monday and my travels back home for my dear grandmother’s funeral gave me the opportunity to try something that originates a little closer to Houston, Texas, my hometown.
Our chosen ingredients this week are chocolate and spice so it didn’t take long for me to think of Mexican chocolate which comes already mixed with cinnamon, almond and vanilla flavorings. It is a sweet rather granular chocolate, used in cooking mole and making hot chocolate. In this case, it makes a tasty muffin. If you can’t get Mexican chocolate where you live, the Food Network informs us that a substitute can be created using semi-sweet chocolate and almond extract.
Ingredients
2 cups or 250g all purpose flour
3/4 cup or 170g sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup or 180ml milk
7 oz or 200g Mexican chocolate, divided in half
1/4 cup or 57g unsalted butter
2 large eggs
Method
Preheat oven to 350°F or 180°C and generously grease cups and top of 12-cup muffin tin or line with paper muffin liners.
In a large bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking powder and salt together.
Melt half of the Mexican chocolate in a microwaveable measuring cup by zapping it for 15 seconds at a time and stirring in between. Melting mine took 30 seconds total.
Add your butter to the chocolate and microwave for another 15 seconds or until it is just melted. Stir the chocolate and butter together and allow to cool.
Chop the remaining Mexican chocolate roughly.
In a small bowl, whisk together milk, eggs and cooled butter/chocolate.
Add all the wet ingredients to the flour mixture.
Gently fold just until dry ingredients are moistened. Then fold in your chopped chocolate.
Divide your batter relatively evenly between the 12 muffin cups. Bake 20-25 minutes or until muffins are golden.
Remove from oven and let cool 10-15 before removing muffins from tin and cool on a wire rack.
Enjoy!
