Chocolate Chip Muffins

Baked this chocolate chip muffins last week. The teddy bear guarding the muffins is Cookie, and is FJ's favourite bear. Bought it from Bata a few years ago, when they had a fund-raising campaign in aid of the National Cancer Society. Her biggest regret is that I only bought one of the bears, as they came in a few different colours. Seeing that she loved it so much, I went back to Bata to try to purchase the whole range, but by then they had already sold out the bears. Have tried to get another one from Ebay, but so far have been unsuccessful. I supposed those who purchased the bears fell in love with it and was not willing to dispose of it.

My recipe for the muffins :

100 g butter
100 g fine sugar
1/2 tsp salt
120 g flour
1 tsp baking flour
1/2 tsp sodium bicarbonate
60 g ground almonds
50 ml fresh milk
20 g cocoa powder
100 g chocolate chips
2 eggs (grade A)

Method :
1) Sift flour, baking powder and ground almonds together. (the original recipe calls for hazelnuts, but i only had almonds so used that instead.)
2) Cream butter, sugar and salt until light and fluffy.
3) Add in eggs and beat well after each addition. (to prevent eggs from curdling add in a tbsp of flour into the butter mixture)
4) Fold in flour. Add in milk, cocoa powder and chocolate chips, and mix until well combined.
5) Put mixture into paper cups and bake in oven at 180 deg. C for about 15 mins.

I don't like the taste of sodium bicarbonate in cakes so I normally reduce or omit it altogether.
I once saw Nigella Lawson on tv using an ice cream scoop to scoop out the batter for cup cakes, and it was certainly easier that way to fill the paper cups, and you can get any equal portion for each paper cups.