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Not only will your family love these chocolate chip and orange muffins, but they’ll flip at the cheesecake filling.
Who Doesn’t Love Chocolate Chip Muffins?
Big bakery style chocolate chip muffins are a perennial favorite. They’re wonderful just plain, but can they be made even better? You betcha!
All you do is add a bit of cheesecake filling.
Make ‘Em Big
I always make Texas-sized muffins just because I like huge muffins!
Obviously, there’s more to eat, but bigger muffins make a better presentation. Therefore, the advice I give anyone is always have a regular-size pan on hand because it’s useful for more than muffins, but buy the big pans too. Once you’ve gone “big” you probably won’t go back to regular.
In fact now when I look at muffins made in a standard pan, they look sad and skimpy. As far as “portion control,” if you’re concerned then eat half and store the other half for later. Problem solved!
Orange And Chocolate
Orange and dark chocolate are a very tasty combination. If you’ve ever had a Terry’s Chocolate Orange at Christmastime, you know what I mean.
If you’ve never tried this combination, I encourage you to do so because I’m sure you’ll love it. But these muffins are equally as good if you don’t add the orange accents.
Do make sure to use the dark semi-sweet morsels. Milk chocolate will give you less flavor impact. You may use regular-sized chips, but you will have to double the amount. I use mini morsels almost exclusively for baking, and there’s a couple of reasons for this. First, minis seem to disperse much better in a batter so you can use half the amount of regular morsels called for in a recipe. Also since it’s half the amount, it’s also half the fat–and that’s in any recipe where you replace regular morsels with mini. Because they do disperse better, you won’t feel shortchanged on chocolate flavor. When I fist heard this tip about 25 years ago, I was skeptical, but it’s true and I’ve done it ever since.
The Recipe
Orange Chocolate Chip Cheesecake Muffins
Ingredients
MUFFINS
- 2 1/2 cups flour
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter melted & cooled slightly
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup sour milk or buttermilk
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 1 tbsp grated orange zest
- 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips
FILLING
- 8 oz cream cheese softened
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 2 tbsp flour
SANDING coarse sugar for garnish (optional)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Spray or line (with paper or parchment cups) a 6-cup Texas/Supersize muffin tin or a 12-cup regular muffin tin.
- In a small bowl, beat together the filling ingredients; set aside.
- Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and chocolate chips to a large bowl and stir to combine.
- In another bowl, whisk together the melted butter, sugar, eggs. milk, vanilla and orange zest.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir until just combined.
- Place about 1-2 tbs (use the lesser amount if making regular-size muffins) of the batter in each cup. Divide the filling equally between all the cups.
- Divide remaining batter between all the cups. Sprinkle with about 1 tsp sanding sugar if desired.
- Bake for 5 minutes at 425 then reduce oven temperature to 375 degrees F and continue baking for 12-15 minutes for REGULAR muffins and 15-20 minutes for TEXAS muffins.
