Breakfast-y snack

I had some chocolate mini-morsels leftover from making chocolate zucchini cake, and some butter in the fridge about to expire, so I was searching around for a recipe that called my name.  I hopped over to Bakerella's site and her "featured sweet" is mini maple pancake muffins!  That means I can finally use that awesome Virginia maple syrup we got at the Bath County Farmers' Market this summer.  Perfect!

Here's the recipe:

• Ingredients:
• 1 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2/3 cup buttermilk
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons pure maple syrup
• 2 tablespoons melted butter
• 1/2 cup milk chocolate chips

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar in a medium bowl. Sift together with a wire whisk.

Look, Bonnie!  I used the right kind of measuring cup! :) 

• In another bowl, stir buttermilk, egg, maple syrup and melted butter until just combined.

• Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and stir with a spoon until combined.
• Stir in chocolate chips. Reserve a few chips to sprinkle on the tops.

• I used my cookie scoop to put the dough in the mini-cupcake pan so the muffins would all be the same size

• Bake for 8-9 minutes - (I cooked mine for about 13 minutes - after 9 minutes I stuck a cake tester in and got dough, so back in the oven they went!)

 

 
 I let them cool for a few minutes in the pan and then, with the help of a toothpick along the edges, took them out to cool for another few minutes on a wire rack.  Then I poured some maple syrup in a bowl for dipping the muffins.

 Time to paint the nails again...

The verdict:  without dipping them into the syrup, they taste like warm chocolate chip cookies, moist on the inside and a little crunch on the outside.  If you dip them, you get the pancake taste.  Maybe substitute blueberries or bananas to get more of a pancake feel instead of dessert.

They taste awesome...