Chocolate Chip Muffins

Sometimes you need comfort food. That was true yesterday when my sister visited for a little "girl time," an occasion for chocolate chip muffins! This recipe is adapted from one in a very old cookbook which was my grandmother's. These are good, old-fashioned muffins, a little crunchy on top and moist inside with plenty of chocolate!

Here are the ingredients:

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup soft shortening
1/2 cup chocolate chips, more or less to taste ("mini" chips if you can find them)
1 egg
1/2 cup milk (fat-free half-and-half is even better)

Here's my method:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease and flour a standard 12-cup muffin pan.

Into a large bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.

With a pastry blender, cut the shortening into the dry ingredients until the mixture looks like coarse corn meal.

Stir the chocolate chips into the dry ingredients. This keeps the chips from sinking to the bottom of the muffins as they bake.

Crack the egg into another bowl and whisk it. Add the milk and whisk again. Pour the egg & milk mixture all at once into the dry ingredients.

Now here's the key to light muffins: With a fork, stir the mixture from the bottom, lifting the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients just until everything is moistened. The batter will be lumpy -- Resist the urge to over-stir.

Portion the batter evenly into the muffin pan's cups. I use a cookie scoop to do this, but a spoon works just as well.

Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, until just golden brown.

Enjoy with a dot of butter, if you really want to razz the diet-police!

Now go jog around the block to work off those muffins before they morph into a muffin-top!