Chocolate Muffins

This recipe is actually a Snow Original, made while messing around one day in my kitchen. I'm very proud of it and it's been consistently well-received by everyone I've fed them to. Have gotten two different people telling me they're the best chocolate muffins they ever ate. I'm so arrogant about that.

Ingredients

• Flour (200 grams)
• Baking Powder (6 grams)
• Cinnamon (4 teaspoons)
• Cocoa (30 grams)
• Vanilla Sugar (16 grams) or Vanilla Extract (2 teaspoons)
• Sugar (200 grams)
• Butter (200 grams, soft to molten)
• 4 Eggs
• Pinch of Salt
• Lucky Teaspoon of Honey (likely doesn't really do anything but it's habit now)
• Optional: Hazelnuts (to taste)

Preparation

• Preheat oven to 175 °C
• Beat the butter, sugar, vanilla sugar or extract, honey, and salt until as smooth as possible.
• Add eggs one by one, only adding the next one once the last is fully incorporated.
• In a separate bowl, combine the flour, cinnamon, cocoa, and baking powder.
• Sift the flour mixture into the wet mixture. Do this in stages, folding the flour into the wet mixture as you go. You can either do this with a whisk/fork or (wooden) spoon.
• If adding hazulnuts, add hazulnuts. Mix through batter with a wooden spoon.
• Spoon batter into muffin cups.
• Bake for 20 minutes.

Tips

• You can also make a cake out of this batter. Bake for 60 minutes instead of 20.
• Easest way to 'chop' hazelnuts is to put them in a ziplock bag and crush them with a rolling pin or other blunt object. Just don't crush them too much.
• The sugar is intended to be standard white sugar, but replacing (part) of it with brown or dark brown sugar adds depth of flavor.
• Experiment with adding other spices! I like to add star anise, nutmeg, speculaas spices, etc.
• You can add frosting if you want but you'll have to look up a recipe yourself, I never add frosting to my muffins. Because I'm lazy.