Dark Chocolate Espresso Muffins

These dark chocolate espresso muffins are rich, ultra chocolatey, soft, and perfectly moist that bake up in just 30 minutes. They are the ultimate homemade bakery style muffins with high dome tops and melty chocolate chunks studded throughout the interior. Oh, and chocolate and espresso are truly such a match made in heaven. You can bake them up for any occasion, or enjoy them with your evening tea or even to start your day by having a chocolate muffin for breakfast. 

Ingredients you’ll need:

• All-purpose flour: I highly recommend weighing all your ingredients using a kitchen scale for accurate recipe results. If you’re using cups, don’t scoop your cup into the flour. Spoon the flour into your cup and level it off with the back of a knife. 
• Cocoa Powder: In this recipe, I use a combination of dutch process and black cocoa powder, to add maximum richness and the ultimate chocolate flavor. If you do not have black cocoa powder on hand, you can use dutch process cocoa powder instead. 
• Leaveners: To ensure that these muffins rise to form high-domed tops and brown evenly, you will need to add both baking powder and baking soda.
• Espresso: You will need freshly brewed espresso to make these muffins. This not only adds a distinct espresso flavour but also helps to enhance the flavour of chocolate in the muffins. If you’re in a pinch you can replace this with equal amounts of strong coffee. 
• Sugars: Sugar acts as a binding agent to your muffins along with adding sweetness. You will need both granulated and brown sugar to make these muffins. Brown sugar helps to add more moisture, softness and flavour to these muffins.
• Eggs: Use large eggs and bring it to room temperature before mixing in. Eggs strengthen the binding of your muffins and also add moisture. Having your eggs at room temperature makes it easier to incorporate them and allow them to mix thoroughly in your muffin batter. A good way of doing this is by letting them sit in a bowl filled with room temperature water for around 10 minutes or until they come down to room temperature.
• Vanilla: You must use a high quality pure vanilla extract in your recipes. This helps to add a rich flavor to your baked goods. Pure vanilla extracts are typically dark brown in color. This enhances the flavor of all ingredients and you should never leave this out.
• Buttermilk: Buttermilk is more acidic and has a higher fat content than whole milk too. Both of these things help it cut through the sweetness of the muffins, giving them a better flavor overall. It also helps to add moisture to your bakes. If you’re in a pinch and don’t have buttermilk in hand, I have a DIY substitute for you. Add 1 teaspoon of lemon juice in half cup. You can double or half this as required. Fill that cup with whole milk to the top. Mix and let it sit for 5 minutes. That’s it, your buttermilk is ready. 
• Unsalted butter: I also prefer to use unsalted butter because salted butters have varying amounts of salt content in them and it is always a good idea to add it on your own and avoid your bakes from being too salty.
• Chocolate: I highly recommend using good quality couverture baking chocolate chips or chocolate bars (I use callebaut) to ensure the best flavor. Couverture chocolates are made of cocoa butter as compared to regular compound chocolates which are made of saturated fats like oil. This will also help you get those melty pools of chocolate. 

FAQ

Some other chocolate recipes you’ll love:

• Extra Dark Chocolate Bundt Cake
• Chewy Espresso Chocolate Chunk Cookies
• Easy Homemade Twix Bars

 

HOW TO GET THE BEST RESULTS FROM THIS RECIPE?

All of the recipes on the blog are thoroughly tested multiple times and carefully designed so that anyone can reproduce these delicious baked good in their own kitchen and enjoy them to the fullest. The only way to make this possible is when anyone can exactly replicate the measurements and temperatures.

• In order to standardise the way ingredients are measured, I highly recommend that you weigh them in grams. Volume measurements are nearly not as accurate and have a lot of scope for errors. To precisely be able to replicate the recipes, all you will need is a kitchen scale!
• Every oven heats up differently. Your oven might be over heating or under heating by around 50 degrees or more and you might not even know. In order to ensure that you are baking at the right temperatures, I highly recommend investing in an oven thermometer!

If you would still like to bake using volume measurements, I mentioned those below. However, I primarily test my recipes in grams and cannot promise the best results if you do so. Trust me, once you’ll start using these tools you’d never want to go back!

Happy Baking!

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