Baking with Blobby

Here and there you've seen - probably on my 12 of 12 - a certain chocolate cherry muffin I get on Saturdays after my run. 

The Old Man's Running Group goes to a bakery after, well, all of their runs, and on Saturday this particular bakery has these muffins. They rotate the muffin flavour each day, so Saturday is the only day I can get these. 

But with being out of town this last weekend, I wasn't at the run or the bakery. What's a Blobby to do???

In theory, I should have tried baking these long ago and save me all kinds of money. Probably for the price of one muffin, I could put the same amount of money into ingredients and make 12 times the amount of muffins. 

So......that's what I did. Or tried. As you can see, it's a little ingredient-heavy, but probably on par with a lot of baking things. It goes quickly and clean up is done well before the timer goes off. 

Let's go on a baking adventure. 

Ingredients 

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour 

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (Dutch process) 

1 teaspoon baking powder 

1/2 teaspoon baking soda 

1/2 teaspoon salt 

1/2 cup canola oil 

1/2 cup buttermilk 

2 large eggs 

1 teaspoon vanilla 

1/2 cup granulated sugar 

1/4 cup brown sugar, lightly packed 

1 cup (heaping) sour cherries, halved 

1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips 

Instructions 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. 

Line a muffin tin with paper liners or lightly spray with non-stick cooking spray and set aside. 

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt until well combined. 

In another bowl, whisk together the oil, milk, eggs, vanilla, sugar, and brown sugar until smooth and well combined. 

Add this mixture to the dry ingredients and stir until just combined. 

Fold in the cherries and chocolate chips. 

Divide the batter between the prepared muffin cups and bake for 20-22 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre of a muffin comes out clean. 

Cool for 5 minutes in the muffin tin, then remove the muffins to a wire rack to cool completely.

It will come as no shock to you that the bakery muffins are superior to Blobby's. 

These look ok. Smell great. But honestly, it comes down to taste - and these are passable, but they're not like what I get on Saturdays. 

There are no sour cherries yet available here, so I used frozen sweet cherries. It makes a difference fos sure. And even in a 350 degree oven the chocolate chips didn't entirely melt. I don't mind the textrure, I just wasn't really expecting it. 

And they were not moist. To get the toothpick to come out clean, I had to bake for an additional five minutes. I'm sure that didn't help with the dry factor, but I'm guessing it's something else too - but I don't know what.  More oil? Add butter? More buttermilk? 

I mean, there are a lot of recipes out there for these, I just picked the one that looked closest to what I buy. It doesn't mean it is the correct recipe. 

But at least I'll have muffins for a while. Half are in the freezer.