Chocolate-Chip Cookie Muffins

Cookie meets muffin. These bake up rich and fudgy from melted unsweetened chocolate stirred into the batter, with a tender, cake-like crumb from the all-purpose and cake flour blend. Semi-sweet chocolate chips and chopped pecans fold in for the cookie character.

The lemon juice in the half-and-half is a small but smart move. The acid clabbers the cream into a quick buttermilk substitute, which reacts with the baking soda for a softer crumb and adds a faint tang that keeps the chocolate from going one-note sweet.

Creaming the butter and brown sugar a full three minutes is what gets the muffins their lift. The whipped fat creates air pockets that the leavening expands during baking, so don’t shortcut this step or the muffins turn dense and squat.

Pro Tips

• Toss the chocolate chips in a tablespoon of flour before stirring them in. The coating keeps them suspended through the batter
• Add wet and dry ingredients alternately, beginning and ending with dry. This protects the gluten from overdevelopment
• Toast the pecans in a dry skillet before chopping for deeper, butterier flavor
• Pull the muffins from the tin within a couple of minutes of baking. Bottoms steam soggy if left in too long

Variations

• Swap pecans for walnuts or skip the nuts entirely
• Replace half the semi-sweet chips with white chocolate or chopped dark chocolate chunks
• Add a teaspoon of instant espresso powder to the batter to deepen the chocolate flavor