The Muffin Man

If you go to your local coffee shop and order a muffin, you'll more than likely get a giant, sugary confection that closely resembles a cupcake without any frosting.  There is (or at least should be) a big difference between a muffin and a cupcake though.  A cupcake should be sweeter and lighter than a muffin.  Muffins are more dense, less sweet, and chewier.

The method for making the two are completely different as well.  A muffin is really a quickbread.  A cupcake is a cake that long, long ago would've been baked in an earthenware mug on the side of the hearth.

Anyway, the other night we had chocolate chip muffins.

The muffin method involves mixing all of your dry ingredients in one bowl and all of the wet ingredients in another.

For the dry goods  in our muffins, we mix All purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

For the wet goods, we have Sugar, oil, egg, egg yolk and yogurt.

When I mix the wet goods, I start with the egg and egg yolk.  I whisk them together until everything is homogenous, then I whisk in the sugar to form a paste.  Then the oil gets drizzled in and then finally the yogurt.  When all is said and done, everything is nicely incorporated and evenly distributed.  Whisking the eggs first gives us plenty of emulsifiers.

Next, as with our pancakes earlier, we add the wet ingredients to the dry.  Then our mix-ins...in this case the chocolate chips go for a dip.

Mix everything just to combine.  Don't overwork the flour or you'll produce excess gluten and the muffins will be way too tough and chewy.  Some lumps are OK.  They'll bake out.

Using a disher to fill the pan will ensure that we get even amounts of batter in each cup.  This means that all of the muffins will cook evenly.  No tiny burnt muffins or big, uncooked muffins to be had!

As a test, I sprinkled just a bit of sugar over 3 of the muffins (the three on the left in the picture above) before they went into the oven.

After they came out, they looked like this

The exterior is crusty, the inside is dense and just dry enough to justify slathering on some butter!

Ingredients (dry)
303 g All purpose Flour
10 g baking powder
6 g baking soda
pinch of kosher salt

Ingredients (wet)
105 g sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 egg + 1 egg yolk
1 cup plain yogurt

1 cup chocolate chips