Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Muffins

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Muffins

¾ cup butter or margarine, softened
¾ cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. baking soda
¼ tsp. salt
¾ cup applesauce
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup (6 oz) chocolate chips

In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar.

Chloe helped me! :)

Beat in egg. Combine dry ingredients (not oats); add alternately with applesauce to the creamed mixture. Stir in oats and chocolate chips. Fill greased or paper lined muffin tins 3/4 full. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes (or 10 minutes for mini muffins).

Yield: 12 muffins (or 52 mini muffins)

So how I adapted this recipe slightly..

1) I used "quick" oats instead of "rolled" oats. The only difference I've found is that the rolled oats are larger and quick oats are more.. what's the word... processed? I'm not sure if this makes a serious difference in recipes when it calls for one and you use the other.

2) I tasted a bit before pouring the mixture into the muffin pans and it tasted funny - I feel like whenever you put applesauce in a recipe, it turns out tasting really apple-y... which in some cases is NOT a good thing... and besides tasting the slight apple flavor, it didn't taste like much else... so I added 1/4 tsp. of vanilla extract at the last minute because I figure that always gives all other baked things a good flavor!

3) So then I used a spoon and put the mix in a 12 cup mini-muffin pan and a 12 cup large muffin pan - totally ignoring how many muffins the mix was supposed to make. (haha - just now realizing this!) Oh well, though... that means I had smaller muffins.

4) I put them in at 350 degrees and set the timer for 10 minutes... at that point the mini-muffins didn't seem completely done, so I left them in for 3 more minutes. The regular size muffins ended up being in the oven a total of 19 minutes.

5) No matter how eager you are to try one, don't take them out of the pan too soon (lesson learned here). :) They fell apart... they stuck to the pan... you name it. It's best to leave them sit & cool for at least 10 minutes or so. Oh, and for some reason I used mini chocolate chips and alot of them stuck to the bottom of the pan! Arghh!

6) I was not too impresed at first, but once I finished my entire muffin, after it had cooled, I realized they were pretty tasty after all! The texture is unique - I mean, I've had oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, but never muffins... and it's just different. (By the way, they didn't turn out tasting like apple!)

I still recommend you try the recipe, especially if you're a lover of anything chocolate, like me. :)