You may have noticed that I haven’t written any baking recipes in this column yet. This isn’t because I don’t like baking. I’m all over it. Some of the best jobs I’ve had have been at bakeries, mixing huge batches of muffins and cookies, and snacking on chocolate chips when the boss wasn’t looking.
No, the reason you haven’t seen much in the way of sweet recipes is because I have an oven that’s hell-bent on making my baking experiences less than smooth.
A wonky, ancient appliance, I’ve spent the last year getting to know it and have come to conclude that it’s just 50 degrees hotter than it says it is, with one half of the oven cooking faster than the other. After I made this discovery, we’ve become much better friends, and you’ll likely see more sweet recipes here, like these chocolatey, rich, whole-grain muffins.
Double chocolate pistachio muffins
Makes 12 large muffins
Prep time 15 minutes, bake time 20 minutes
Ingredients
Dry:
1 cup sorghum flour
1/4 cup white rice flour
1/2 cup oat flour
1/4 cup tapioca starch
(Note – starches and flours can be replaced with all-purpose flour or gluten-free flour mix)
3/4 cup cocoa
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp guar gum (optional)
1 tsp salt (reduce to a pinch if using salted butter)
Wet:
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 cup light brown sugar
1 1/2 cups milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 cup chocolate chips
1 1/3 cup shelled pistachios, roughly chopped
Directions
Preheat oven to 350ˇ Fahrenheit.
Sift all dry ingredients together in a medium-sized bowl.
Combine the melted butter, sugar, milk, and vanilla extract in a large bowl. Once the mixture has cooled to lukewarm, beat in the eggs and whisk the mixture until the sugar dissolves.
With a spatula or wooden spoon, mix the flour mixture into the wet ingredients, scraping the bottom of the bowl and ensuring there are no lumps. Be careful not to over-mix.
Put aside a small handful of chopped pistachios to sprinkle on top of the muffins. Fold the chocolate chips and the rest of the pistachios into the batter. Now grease or prep a muffin tin with paper liners. Spoon the batter into each muffin cup until quite full, leaving only a 1/4 inch space for them to rise. Garnish the muffins with an even layer of the reserved chopped pistachios, and bake for 19-24 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when poked into the centre of a muffin.