Chocolate Chip Muffins

For some time now, we have been buying those mini-muffins from Hostess for the kids to have for breakfast a couple days a week. They come five to a pack, four packs to a box. I was buying them strictly for the convenience factor.

For the record, my kids usually get a banana with their muffins, just so you know their breakfasts aren't completely without nutritional merit. Oh, and I stopped feeding them Pop-tarts, too! Write that down because that's really important! Your testimony may help me in court some day.

Anyhoo, those dang muffins are expensive and filled with all sorts of "stuff" in order to make them last longer than the plastic on Joan Rivers' face. In an effort to transition towards healthier eating and a more dollar-friendly grocery bill, I've decided to start baking more from scratch. I found a recipe for chocolate chip muffins on AllRecipes.com - a website I highly recommend, by the way!

Here's the recipe from Janice at AllRecipes.com. If you read the comments (and I ALWAYS read the comments! You can pick up some valuable tips from others who have tried the recipe), you'll see that a few of them increased the amount of liquid in the recipe. I have tried it with and without doing this and, let me tell you, you MUST increase the liquid ingredients. The muffins come out much too dry otherwise.

For this last batch, I opted for Sweet Caramel Sprinkle from Pampered Chef to sprinkle on the tops of the muffins (before going into the oven) instead of the white sugar/brown sugar combo. They turned out dee-lish!

I would like to start switching out my mainstream ingredients for their organic cousins. I just ran out of flour, so I think this would be a good time to buy an organic version. Baby steps, baby steps. I just found out that Fremont has an organic bakery. I hope to stop by very soon and speak to the owner about her ingredients and where she buys them. Of course, I'll probably have to taste test a few of her creations.

We'll call it "research". There are no calories in research!

Try the chocolate chip muffins or just try baking from scratch but, definitely let go of the pop-tarts!