Espresso Chocolate Muffins Recipe

Every Friday night I'd torment myself in my bakery kitchen. Saturday was the biggest money day of the week, so I tried my best to make sure that the pastry cases would be good and stocked. That meant baking pies, piping rosettes on cakes and cupcakes, weighing out dry mixes for scones and crumb cake, rolling up cinnamon bun dough, and mixing up buckets of various muffin batters so that everything would be ready to go when I slid through the door the next morning and fired up the ovens. I didn't party much on the weekends in those days. In fact it was usually just me in an over-caffeinated frenzy near midnight, blasting and singing along to tunes on the John Tesh radio show (yup).

I'd like to think I had a good work ethic, but the truth is I just didn't know when to stop. I always felt like I needed to make "just one more thing". Like when I'd decided to mix up a batch of chocolate muffins. I'd already had blueberry, strawberry, and pineapple muffins, not to mention raisin bran muffins and corn muffins....but a muffin line-up without chocolate? Never! So there I'd be, bleary-eyed, stirring up the batter for these incredible muffins. Moist and chocolaty, there are handfuls of chocolate chips folded into the batter and then sprinkled on top. A tablespoon of instant espresso powder deepens the flavor. (It'll help to perk you up too.)

Let's be real here. Yes, chocolate muffins are sturdier than a cupcake. And yes, most muffins these days are pretty sweet and more cake-y than muffin-y anyway. But let's not fool ourselves. Chocolate muffins are just a sneaky way to eat dessert for breakfast. But there's nothing wrong with that. Rise and shine my fellow chocolate fiends.