Bakery-Style Chocolate Muffins

When my daughter wakes up from her nap, the first question she often asks is "mommmy, can we bake?"  Do I want flour all over my counter?  Do I want that gritty feeling of sugar under my feet until the next vacuum session?  Do I want to stain treat a shirt with chocolaty batter on it?  Why yes, yes, and yes!  Ever since my daughter was old enough to know what cooking and baking was, she has helped me.  She's getting pretty good, so the clean up is getting easier.  The biggest battle right now is to keep her from eating large quantities of raw cookie dough, batter, or other delightful ingredient.   However, beater licking is an important job, and I would never deprive her childhood of that.

A few days ago she woke up and said she wanted to make muffins.  "Lotsa lotsa lotsa chocolate muffins", was her exact request.  So, one of the first Pinterest hits was this recipe for "Double Chocolate Muffins".

The big draw for me was that they looked like a hefty, delicious, bakery-style muffin.  So we gave them a whirl.  I followed the recipe exactly, so I won't re-post it here.  Note, however, that the blog containing this recipe mentioned that the writer altered the recipe.  I made the original recipe that she found.  Here is what we ended up with:

The batter was very, very thick and the end result was a heavy, but delicious, super chocolaty muffin.  However, like a bakery, day olds in this case are not that desirable.  I recommend gobbling on the first day.  They are still great after the fact, but they are definitely like a heavy, day old muffin.

I'm thinking maybe the blogger's recommended changes would  have been a good choice in this case.  I think she increased the liquids component, and the method of mixing, which increased the moisture and fluffiness of the muffin.  I'll try that another day.....