Chocolate chip muffins

Before even going to my today's post I need to apologise for leaving such a huge gap between my posts. After finishing off my master's I basically went travelling for 2,5 weeks - flying back to Estonia to visit my parents and popping over to London to check on my flat and now I'm back in Singapore and have almost managed to get rid of my jet lag. I have to admit that it is a lot more difficult to make myself get up in the morning if there's no need for it - I could easily just stay in bed the whole day. I honestly thought that I'd have time to cook something new and share it with you, but it would have been really difficult to make my hungry family wait until I take my pictures so getting new material for the blog whilst I was in Estonia was nearly impossible. It's a different story with London as I was there alone for half of the time and my sister joined me for the other half of the week, so no issue of keeping the family waiting, but we were so busy with all the shopping and appointments that I just didn't have the time and the energy to whip up something worthy of sharing. So that's my explanation for not updating my blog. I'll try to be better over the rest of the summer, but I already know for a fact that there are at least 2 weeks when I'm travelling - so no posts coming then.

Now to the recipe then. In my honest opinion, every girl (or a guy for that matter) should have a simple basic muffin recipe which can be put together without having to go shopping for all the special components that some recipes require. This is a very simple and straightforward recipe and basically all one needs to do is to mix together the ingredients in a big bowl and then bake the muffins.

In order for muffins to be good, the recipe does not necessarily need to be complicated. I made these for  my little sister when she had a friend sleeping over. She actually wanted to make muffins herself from a  muffin mix, but I just could not let her do that - homemade ones are so much better! And all that was left over was "taken care of" by my other sister and my mum - even my dad had few, and that's something.

All in all, this is an amazing quick-fix for an upcoming party if you're short of time, but still want to make something tasty yourself, rather than resorting to ready made mixes or ready made muffins ... I promise that by serving these muffins - moist and fluffy on the inside and crispy on the outside -  positive comments are guaranteed. Or a lovely movie night in, picnic, having friends over for coffee or even better - if you feel like having something indulgent for breakfast. Enjoy!

Ingredients

(Makes 18)
- 2 medium eggs
- 200g caster sugar
- 250ml milk
- 125ml sunflower oil (or other vegetable oil)
- 400g plain flower
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 175g chocolate chips (can have more or less than that)

Directions
Preheat the oven to 180C. Line a 12-hole muffin tray with paper cups / grease the tray or use silicone muffin cups. Then beat the eggs in a bowl and mix in the oil and milk. Add the sugar and mix until its dissolved. Then add the dry ingredients - sift in the flour, baking powder and salt and mix until smooth. Finally add the chocolate chips and give it a nice stir so they're scattered evenly throughout the batter.

Fill the muffin cases 2/3 full and bake for around 25 minutes. Enjoy right out of the oven or let them cool. For even more indulgence serve with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream.

Basic muffin recipe from BBC Good Food