Chocolate Mania

My sister is a fanatic when it comes to chocolate. So whenever I bake for her and her husband, I have to use chocolate. The past weekend I was there (a very sinful weekend as you will see), I made Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffins, Chocolate Chip Pancakes and Chocolate Chip Cookies.

I am sad to say that two of the recipes I used were bad - surprisingly, they came from Food Network. I love Food Network, so I was quite disappointed that they would make these loser recipes available on their website. It was partially my fault to be honest...I read the reviews for these recipes and I was warned. I did try to correct their weaknesses and was successful with one.

Anyways, let's start with the good...Martha Stewart's Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies. It's good, despite having a tad too much butter for my taste. As usual, I used about 2 tablespoons less butter and packed the brown sugar very lightly so the cookies won't be as sweet. It still came out buttery and the sweetness was just right. I also mixed in bittersweet chocolate as opposed to using all semisweet for more depth of flavor.

Above, Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

And now, the bad. If you're looking for a chocolate cupcake or muffin recipe, stay away from this one. The muffins came out dry, even when I used a tablespoon more butter, a tablespoon more oil and a bit more milk in the recipe to try to add more moisture. There is just not enough fat content in this recipe.

Above, Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffins

If you're looking for a Chocolate Chip Pancake recipe, this one ain't bad, but add 1/4C more flour and 1/2 tsp more baking powder. This is because the batter has too much liquid, and the pancakes come out flat. Also, beware that although it says it makes 24 pancakes, the size of the pancakes are quite small. The recipe is probably good enough for two very hungry people and maybe three not very hungry people. To feed three people sufficiently for breakfast, I followed the portions from this recipe and also made another half of this recipe when I realized it wasn't enough to feed us all (so make 1.5 times this recipe for three people). This yielded three 8" pancakes per person, plus one 10" pancake for snacking later.

Yup, I did all this baking over the course of 2 days!