Ever since I was a kid, my favorite muffins have been chocolate chip. And oddly enough, I haven’t made them in forever. I’ve made banana yogurt chocolate chip muffins, and blueberry muffins, but never regular ol’ chocolate chip muffins. The great thing about a basic chocolate chip muffin recipe is not only is it incredibly easy to make, but you can dress it up in hundreds of ways. You can add nuts, white chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, dried cranberries, fresh berries, banana, orange zest… whatever. You can make it however you like it. You can substitute oil for the butter, and probably even yogurt or cream instead of milk too. You can completely personalize it.

So it was a gloomy day and I had been cleaning and doing laundry and looking forward to making dinner (a big bowl of homemade sauce and pasta) and starting my book, Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession by Julie Powell (mucho thanks to Brianne for dropping it off last week on her way back to PA!)* when I got an urge for chocolate chip muffins. Just randomly. So I made them!

And that’s another awesome thing about muffins. They’re good for breakfast, for a snack, after dinner, before dinner, etc. Anytime is a good time for a muffin. And I’m not bluffin’!

BASIC CHOCOLATE CHIP MUFFINS

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup light-brown sugar
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup milk
• ½ cup butter — melted and cooled
• 2 eggs – beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 6 ounces mini chocolate chips (about half an average size bag)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 F. and grease up twelve muffin cups or put liners in them ( I prefer liners because it’s less messy that way).
2. In a large bowl, stir together flour, sugars, baking powder, and salt. In another bowl, stir together milk, eggs, butter, and vanilla until blended. Make a well in center of dry ingredients; add milk mixture and stir just to combine. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts.
3. Spoon batter into muffin cups, filling them as much as possible; bake 15-20 minutes, or until a knife inserted in center of one muffin comes out clean.
4. Remove muffin tin to wire rack; cool 5 minutes and remove from tins to finish cooling.

These muffins are awesome, because they don’t fall apart when you eat them, even when they’re warm. They’re very rich, but they aren’t heavy. Plus, the tops come out really awesome and “crumbly” looking, not perfect and smooth. Even when totally cooled and room temperature, they’re fantastic. My favorite chocolate chip muffin recipe, for sure. This recipe makes only 12, so if you’re making them in those jumbo cupcake pans or you want more, then you’ll have to double the recipe. Let me reiterate: this is the best chocolate chip muffin recipe EVER. It’s so good, I made 12 and they went in about an hour… and I had to make more a day or two later.

I’d love to see/hear about some variations on this, so if you make it and change it up or add stuff, please comment here and give me a link!

Off topic, I wanna tell you guys about a purchase I made recently. I was in the market for some new oven mitts and potholders, so of course I did an Etsy search (take the pledge- buy handmade!). And I found these pink cupcake ones at KittenSneezes on Etsy (what a cute name, right?) and fell in love with them.

She’s a pretty new seller to Etsy, but she sells potholders (she doesn’t have any for sale right now), cat collars (or small dog collars, too I suppose) and little credit card pouches. She was so sweet, she shipped my 2 cupcake potholders out a little late so she threw in the kitty one for nothing.  Which was totally unnecessary because the potholders were only$12.00 a set, and she didn’t ship them that late, but  the gesture was appreciated nonetheless. Very nice of her, and I mean, how could I not love a potholder made with fabric that says “PURRRFECT PICNIC” and has cats having picnics on it? Adorbs.

Whenever I have a good experience with a seller or a webstore or shop, I always want to share it with you readers, not only to give them some business, but also because I want you all to have cute stuff too. And if you weren’t as obsessed with cute housewares and oven mitts and aprons as I am, then… why are you here!? You must be very confused. Oh, wait, for the cupcakes and food? Oh okay. I gotcha. Anyway, I’m off to browse Jessie Steele and make lists of all the aprons & matching oven mitts I want next. Like, oh, this one… this one… and this one… OF COURSE this one and this sexy one… rawrrr.

*By the way, the Julie Powell book? Indulgent, petulant and slightly off-putting. The way she talks about her affair and how she treated her husband was sort of too cavalier for my taste (although he himself did have an affair at the same time, and they were both aware of it, it led me to believe he did so to make her jealous, and try and get her to see how she hurt him, and when it didn’t work I assume he figured he might as well just carry on). Yeah, affairs happen, but when you speak of them in such a way, it’s gotta make the reader think you really had no care  or respect for either of the men or yourself.  It was so matter-of-fact, so calculated,  and also so all-consuming, it makes you wonder how she had time to have a husband, a man on the side, an apprenticeship at a butcher shop, two apartments and write a book. However, I did appreciate that she didn’t “sugarcoat” the affair- and told it for what it was, using blunt and coarse language. To make something like that seem sweet or innocent would’ve been somewhat cheesy not to mention hypocritical. So my take? An interesting read, more so for the butchery aspect (I did find it sorta fascinating when she was describing how meat is cut, etc). The recipes, since they were all involving meat, I didn’t particularly find mouth-watering, but for meat lovers I guess they have a lot of potential power. I haven’t read Julie & Julia, I only saw the movie, but this is a stark contrast to that. Although I guess we should keep in mind, a book (or two) isn’t really ever a fair description or depiction of a person, even if it’s written by them about themselves.