Wake Up and Smell the Muffins.

Afternoon. Before I get to the muffins, let’s have a look at last night’s shrimp:

ahh. they were delicious!
Until about 3 days ago, I was terrified of baking. All the mixing, measuring, and all the butter kind of freaks me out. A few weeks ago I was watching The Barefoot Contessa and Ina was baking a lemon cake made with yogurt. I was ecstatic. This was the ingredient I had been waiting for. As I sat on the edge of my couch taking note of every step and I could practically taste the cake, and couldn’t wait to get started. Fast forward to the snow day we had on Wednesday, I invited my friend Arania over for some wine and a 3 course meal featuring Ina’s Lemon Yogurt Cake for dessert.
Earlier in the week I had placed a Fresh Direct order, and in anticipation of baking the cake a I purchased a very large container of yogurt. I hadn’t bothered to see how much I needed, I just figured better to be safe than sorry, and always leave room for error. Turned out I only needed a cup of yogurt for the cake (which came out delicious!) and wound up with a ton leftover. Adopting the policy “want not waste not”, I was determined to bake something else with my yogurt.
I woke up this morning and had some cornflakes. I was feeling kind of lazy and since I’m planning to make a barley ragu for dinner tonight, I hadn’t planned to cook breakfast —until for some reason the idea of blueberry muffins popped in my head. I sat down at my computer looked up a few recipes, contemplated going out to get blueberries, and then remembered I had yogurt and chocolate chips! The decision was made. I had found an easy recipe for blueberry yogurt muffins, so I made a few alterations and 25 minutes later my muffins were a reality!
here’s the original recipe. below is my edit:
1 egg
1 1/2 cups plain whole milk yogurt
1/4 c. oil
2 c. all purpose flour
1/2 c. sugar
3 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. almond extract
6 oz. semi sweet chocolate chips1 tbsp. sugar (to sprinkle on muffin tops)

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Beat egg in a large bowl. Stir in yogurt and oil. Mix in flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and almond extract until moistened. Fold in chocolate chips. Fill muffin cups about 2/3 full. Sprinkle tops with sugar. Bake until golden brown, 15-20 minutes. Immediately remove from pan and serve warm. Makes 12 muffins.
Here’s the finished product:

almost time to get started on my barley ragu. ciao for now!