Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Muffins

Even before I became a food blogger and got in the habit of posting recipes for you lovely people a couple or three times a week, when I went on holidays, my favorite ones included accommodation with a kitchen:  Vacation rentals from VRBO or most recently from airbnb which allow you to choose the number of beds and bathrooms and well-equipped kitchens.  Right after hanging out on a beach, my favorite holiday activity is poking through foreign markets and grocery stores and cooking up my discoveries.  I know this is contrary to many folks’ idea of a get-away.  In fact, I’ve been told it’s abnormal and eating out and not having to cook is the whole idea of a holiday.  What can I say?  At least my hobby is useful. :)  What’s your favorite thing to do on holiday?  Ever bought a weird ingredient?

What I bought on this trip to Ecuador: plantain flour, quince paste and rib stock cubes.

This week’s Muffin Monday ingredient is oatmeal.  Since I was visiting my father and his wife and I had no idea what their kitchen was like, I brought along some of those little foil cups.  They work pretty good, if you don’t mind that they spread out a little, your muffins end up flattish on top and sometimes a little batter oozes over the sides while baking. 

Ingredients

For the muffin batter:

1 1/2 cups or 190g all purpose flour

1/2 cup or 45g oatmeal

3/4 cup or 170g dark brown sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup or 240ml milk

1/2 cup or 115g unsalted butter, melted and cooled

2 large eggs

1/2 cup chocolate chips (plus extra for sprinkling on after the crumble)

For the crumble:

1/4 cup or about 30g plain flour

1/4 cup or 50g dark brown sugar

2 rounded tablespoons or 30g soft unsalted butter

1/4 cup or 22g oatmeal

1/4 teaspoon salt

Method

Preheat oven 350°F or 180°C and prepare muffin pan by greasing or lining with paper muffin cups or putting those little foil muffin cups on a bigger baking pan.

In a large bowl mix together your flour, oatmeal, dark brown sugar, baking powder and salt.

In a smaller bowl, whisk your milk, melted butter and eggs.

Prepare your topping by mixing together the crumble ingredients with a fork.  Set aside.

Pour your wet ingredients into your dry ingredients and stir until just combined. 

Now fold in the chocolate chips, keeping a few back for topping, if desired.

Evenly distribute the batter among the muffin cups. 

Top with the crumble and scatter a couple of reserved chocolate chips.

Gently press down into the batter.

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool for a few minutes.  Remove the muffins from the muffin pan. 

Enjoy!

Muffin Monday is an initiative by Baker Street, a culinary journey of sharing a wickedly delicious muffin recipe every week.  Drop Anuradha a quick line to join her on this journey to make the world smile and beat glum Monday mornings week after week.  Make sure to go and check out what my fellow bloggers have come up with this week!

Plus learn all you ever need to know about muffins, right here at Muffin 101.

Glenys’ Chocolate Chip Pecan Biscuits

With all the trials and tribulations in life, it’s important to keep perspective.  For instance, yesterday morning I was 6700 miles (or 10,800km) from my current location and the only way to cross that distance quickly was to strap myself into a flying metal capsule and trust God and pilot to get me there safely.  The first leg of the trip from Dubai to London was spent in the aisle seat next to a very nice man from Arizona who was going home after six months working on government contract in Afghanistan.  He hadn’t seen his family since September.  I didn’t actually chat with him as we sat together since it is nigh impossible to turn to talk to someone who is so close that his elbow spends most of the flight in your left ribs, but, at one point we were waiting to use the bathroom, along with our third seatmate, Mr. Window who was from Austin, and then we did chat.  Turns out both men had been in the army years ago and were now working in Afghanistan under amazingly challenging conditions.  They are, in fact, in harm’s way most days and live daily with limited electricity and minimal facilities.

Mr. Middle and Mr. Window didn’t know each other before so they compared notes about locations and exchanged tidbits of information about the end of US troop involvement in Afghanistan.  I listened to them talk of time away from family and plans for the future (Both hope to work in the US again when they can find good jobs at home.) and it confirmed for me that everyone has a story.  Every soul on that plane was traveling for a reason.   Holidays, funerals, family visits, business meetings, to seek better medical care or who knows why.  Some travel with reluctance, some with excitement but all with a purpose, even if it is just to see the world.   This life should be about getting to know each other’s stories, don’t you think?   And appreciating the blessings of our own.

Today I want to share a recipe with you that a dear friend made for the movers as she packed up from a freezing house in London to move to one that actually had working heaters.  She said that the moving guys liked them so much that they asked for the recipe so she shared it with me as well.  I don’t know which moving company she hired, but I can tell you, they have good taste!

Ingredients
125g or just little more than 1/2 cup butter
50g or 1/4 cup caster sugar

125g or 2/3 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon natural vanilla essence or extract

250g or 2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

150g or a 5 1/3 oz chocolate chips
125g or almost 4 1/2 oz pecans (You can substitute with walnuts if you want but the taste will be slightly different.)



Method
Preheat your oven to 375°F or 190°C and grease your cookie sheet well.

Pop your pecans in a baking pan into the preheating oven so that they can toast a little.  Watch them carefully to prevent burning and remove and allow to cool once they are slightly toasted.

Cream the butter with both of the sugars until light and fluffy.

Beat in the egg and add the vanilla.

Chop your toasted pecans and set aside.

Sift in the flour with the baking powder and salt.  Beat well to mix.

Fold in the chocolate chips and the nuts. 


Drop the dough by spoonfuls or with a small scoop on to the well-greased baking sheet, leaving space around each to allow for a little spreading.

The first batch stayed very round so for the second pan, I mashed them down a little with a spatula for a flatter cookie.

Bake for 15 minutes or a bit longer if you prefer a crunchy cookie to a soft one.  Cool on the baking sheet and eat!

Some of the rounded first batch.

Enjoy!

Some of the flatter second batch - both were fabulous cookies.

Sour Cream Chocolate Chip Muffins #MuffinMonday

These sour cream chocolate chip muffins are sweet but not too sweet, with fluffy insides perfectly complemented by the semi-sweet chocolate chips. Bake a batch for someone you love!

For the relatively transient life that I have led, I have some good friends who have been my friends for a very long time. I was an expat as a small child but we moved to the Houston area when I was going into fourth grade, after my parents divorced.

My father continued with the expat life, always making sure that my sisters and I had bedrooms wherever he lived and his employer always paid for at least one flight a year, when we would spend most of the three months of summer in his latest location. He would have had us year round if he could (always nice to be wanted!) but Mom would never have given us up and he often lived in places where the expat children ended up going to boarding school anyway because of the lack of a good quality local English language school. (Talking to you, Negritos, Peru and Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei.)

Once again, anyhoo (feel like I have been digressing a lot lately) we moved to Houston, my mother, two sisters and I in the summer between my third and fourth grade years. Mother didn’t think moving back to New Iberia, LA as a young (unwilling, as it were) divorcee was a good idea and I am sure that she was right. Goodness knows the people of the big, progressive city of Houston were judgmental enough. We are talking about the Seventies, folks, and I was one of only two children of divorced parents in my entire fourth grade class of 60 children (two homerooms.) I don’t even want to tell you what those statistics are now but, suffice to say, that there are a lot of families and children in pain out there.

Dear me, but the start of this post is depressing! Let me go on to say that the friends I made in that fourth grade class are still some of my best friends today. Without explanation or excuse, we can get together and, frankly, sometimes act like fourth graders or perhaps 12^th graders because there is often alcohol involved. (Hey, judgers, the drinking age was 18 back then so all of us most of us were legal.)

Last Thursday one of those dear friends was in the hospital recovering from surgery. She was blessed by the presence of her mother, elder son, only daughter and a caring sister I had just missed greeting. I arrived with these muffins for the nurses, so they would take extra good care of her. I would have volunteered to stay the night but she was being ably cared for by her excellently raised daughter, whom I trained briefly in nurse bribery and cajoling. I hung around until the on-call doctor appeared and we got her meds changed from those that were making her sick (there was some discussion of a replacement Jack Daniels IV, which was rejected) and then I handed over the bribery muffins and responsibility, secure that she was in good hands.

Sour Cream Chocolate Chip Muffins

If you need people to see things your way or to take care of a loved one, these muffins seem to work pretty well. Also, they are part of Muffin Monday, which is good fun for me. This recipe comes from Taste of Home. Aside from adding more chips, this recipe was made as written because you don’t need to mess with a pretty good thing.

Ingredients

1-1/2 cups or 190g all-purpose flour (I used King Arthur Unbleached White Wheat.)
2/3 cup or 132g sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 cup (8 ounces) or 240ml sour cream
5 tablespoons or 1/3 cup or 70g butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips (Original recipe called for 3/4 cup but what’s a 1/4 cup of chocolate between friends? The difference between “I like you a whole lot” and “I love you,” that’s what.)

Method
 Line a muffin tin with paper muffin cups or spray with non-stick spray. Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Mix it around a little and make a little well in the middle.

Combine the egg, sour cream, butter and vanilla.

Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened.

Fold in the chocolate chips.

Fill your muffin cups three-fourths full.

Yay! I bought a new muffin tin. I didn't realize how old and grotty mine had gotten till I started taking photos!

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for five minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack.

Enjoy!

You might also be interested in these muffin recipes:
Sheila's Mexican Cornbread
Quick Bread Breakfast Muffins
Banana Bacon Peanut Butter Chip Muffins