Kari's Chocolate Chip Muffins

Two dairy ingredients are working overtime here. Buttermilk provides the acid that activates the baking soda for lift, while sour cream adds extra fat and a tangy richness that keeps the crumb moist for days. Most chocolate chip muffin recipes use one or the other. Using both is the move that pushes these into bakery territory rather than supermarket-bake-sale territory.

Cutting in the butter (or margarine) until crumbly is unusual for a muffin recipe. Most call for melted fat. The crumbly method creates small pockets of solid fat that melt during baking, leaving behind tender hollows that give the muffin its open crumb. Don’t overmix once the wet ingredients hit the dry. The recipe says it twice for good reason. Overmixed muffins develop gluten and turn rubbery instead of fluffy.

Pro Tips

• Fill the muffin tins three-quarters full. Filling halfway gives you flat-topped muffins. Filling to the brim gives you mushroom heads that overflow and stick.
• Use semisweet chocolate chips. Milk chocolate chips melt into greasy patches. Dark chocolate can taste too bitter for breakfast.
• Toss the chocolate chips in a teaspoon of flour before folding into the batter. The flour coats them and keeps them suspended in the batter instead of sinking to the bottom.
• Cool on a wire rack within 5 minutes of pulling from the oven. Leaving muffins in the tin too long steams the bottoms into soggy patches.

Variations

• Sprinkle the tops with coarse sugar or turbinado sugar before baking for a bakery-style crackled crust.
• Add a teaspoon of orange zest to the batter for an orange-chocolate combination.
• Use white chocolate chips with a half cup of fresh raspberries folded in for a fruit-forward variation.