Spooky chocolate fudge muffins. Another idea for Halloween!

The search for simple Halloween-themed recipes continues this week with delicious chocolate fudge muffins topped with a chocolate cobweb pattern.

I found the original recipe for these chocolate fudge muffins on the BBC goodfood website. I’ve described the order in which I put the ingredients together, which is slightly different to the original.

Ingredients (makes 10 muffins)

• 50 g / 1.7 oz dark chocolate
• 85 g / 3 oz butter or margarine
• 1 tbsp milk (use whichever type of milk you have in the fridge)
• 200 g / 7 oz self-raising flour
• 0.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 85 g / 3 oz light brown sugar
• 50 g / 1.7 oz caster sugar
• 1 egg (I used a large egg, but I think medium would be fine)
• 150 ml / 5 fl oz sour cream (the original recipe calls for a 142 ml carton, but the cartons I found were all 150 ml, so I just used that instead).

Method

Pre-heat your oven to 190 degrees C (170 fan)/ Gas Mark 5 / 375 degrees F. Put your muffin cases into your tin. The mixture makes 10 muffins.

I thought I’d make 6 muffins in paper cases and 4 in my silicone tin. The silicone tin turned out to be an error. I’d advise you use only paper cases… but more on that later!

Sieve the flour and bicarb of soda into a bowl, add the brown and caster sugars.

Break the dark chocolate into small pieces and put in a heatproof bowl with the butter and milk. Put in the microwave for 30 seconds, then stir until the chocolate pieces have melted and you have a smooth mixture. I had to put the mixture back in the microwave for a further 10 seconds to melt the last few pieces of chocolate. (If you don’t have a microwave you can melt these ingredients in a pan over a low heat).

In a third bowl, beat the egg. Tip the beaten egg and the sour cream into the flour and sugars. Add the melted chocolate mix and stir all the ingredients together gently until combined.

Spoon the chocolate fudge muffin mix into the paper cases to about three quarters full.

Bake for about 20 minutes. If you would like your muffins more on the fudgy side, I’d suggest baking them a few minutes less. To check they’re done, insert a knife or skewer into the middle of a muffin – if it comes out clean, it’s baked.

Leave the muffins to cool in the tin for 5-10 minutes before transferring the muffins to a cooling tray and leaving them to finish cooling completely.

The chocolate fudge muffins baked in the paper cases turned out beautifully…

Unfortunately the ones in the silicone tray didn’t want to come out of the mould and broke in half…

However, the up side to this was I was left with 4 muffin tops and loads of lovely crumbly muffin to eat mixed with ice cream! Silver linings!

Decoration

Melt 100g / 3.5 oz white chocolate and 100 g dark chocolate separately. You can melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water. Personally, I use the microwave (using 30 second bursts and stirring between bursts). Put 2 large spoonfuls of white chocolate into one piping bag and the same amount of melted dark chocolate into another. You can make piping bags from greaseproof paper or – and this is my preferred method – cut the corner off a plastic freezer bag (piping tip optional). The BBC goodfood website has a short video explaining how to make a piping bag from greaseproof paper, here.

Now comes the delicate part! Working on one muffin at a time, spread some white chocolate from the bowl over the top, letting it drip down the sides. Quickly, before the white chocolate can set, pipe three or four concentric circles of dark chocolate on top of the white. Drag a toothpick, small skewer or knife tip through the circles at regular intervals, working from the centre to the edge to create your cobweb. Repeat this process on four more chocolate fudge muffins. Then switch to your remaining five muffins, using the dark chocolate in the bowl as the base colour and the white chocolate in the piping bag to make white cobweb designs.

They are particularly delicious if you can eat them while the chocolate is still soft! 🙂

If you’re looking for other muffin recipes, you could try:

My mint chocolate muffins.

My peanut butter and banana muffins.

Claire Huston / Art and Soul