Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Muffins

www.flickr.com, photo by Nicola since 1972

It's Monday, and at the Keys' house, that means it's...Muffin Monday! So, today, I'm going to share another muffin recipe with you. This recipe is from Taste of Home, and I only had to make very minor changes in order to make it less refined. As I've mentioned before, yes, it does have chocolate chips in it, and yes, they do have some sugar in them. Feel free to use carob chips, if you prefer, or purchase a bar of very dark chocolate in the "health" section of your grocery store and break it into chunks, if you want. I simply buy the darkest chocolate chips I can find, and I use them sparingly. Don't forget to check the ingredients. I compared the Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips with the other brands at my local store, and the ingredients were quite different. Some of the other options had a lot more "junk" in them than the Ghirardelli.

One other side note: please check the ingredients of your ingredients! Make sure your vanilla doesn't have added corn syrup, your baking powder is aluminum free, and that you don't buy the reduced fat dairy products. Starting with ingredients that don't contain extra, unwanted ingredients will get you off to a better start.

Anyway, on to the recipe!

Sour Cream Chocolate Chip Muffins

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour
2/3 cup sucanat*
3/4 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. sea salt
1 egg
8 ounces sour cream (full fat, please!)
5 Tbsp. butter, melted
1 tsp. vanilla
3/4 cup chocolate chips

Directions:
Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. In a separate bowl, mix togethr the egg, sour cream, butter, and vanilla. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry until just moistened. Do not overmix. Fold in chocolate chips.

Grease a muffin tin with olive oil, and fill each cup 1/2-3/4 full. You will get 12 muffins. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes. They will bounce back to the touch when they are done. Cool for 5 minutes before eating.

*I've been using sucanat lately as a sweetener. I can find it in the bulk section of Whole Foods for a lot less money than I was spending on coconut palm sugar. Coconut palm sugar is also wonderful, however, and would work fine in this recipe as well.