Mocha Oatmeal Muffins

I got a new cookbook!!!  I know you’re as excited as I am, right??  Well, if you’re not, you should be because after looking through the book, I want to make every recipe in it.  And, if you’re nice, I’ll share with you.  See?  It’s a win-win situation!

I love bakeries.  I know. Who doesn’t?  I’ve always said that if I ever get up the oomph to open up my own place, it would be a little bakery/coffee shop.  I love to bake.  I worked in a couple of bakeries growing up, and they are truly magical places. (I’m kind of food nerdy like that.)  I love stumbling across little, homegrown bakeries.  You know, you pass by a store front and it looks sweet, so you stop in.  As soon as you enter the building, you’re overcome with the most amazing sugary, buttery smell.  That REAL bakery smell.  I just love that.

So, imagine my joy when I ran across The Back In The Day Bakery Cookbook earlier this week.  What struck me first was the super cute name.  What a GREAT name for a bakery.  Then, I read the rest of the cover.  It said, “More than 100 recipes from the best little bakery in the south”.  Wait a second, I live in the south!  (I know, the south is a big place, but sometimes it doesn’t feel that big.) I opened it up to find that this sweet, little, apparently amazing bakery is right here in Georgia.  It’s nestled in Savannah.  How I’ve missed it before when I’ve traveled there, I don’t know, but I do know I won’t miss it next time I visit Savannah.  In fact, after drooling all over my cookbook, I may plan a trip JUST so I can visit this bakery.

Reading the cookbook immediately put me in the mood to bake, so I did.  I picked out a muffin recipe because I had everything on hand and it seemed like something I could whip up in the hour I had before the kids came home from school.  Mocha Oatmeal Muffins.  Mmmm…they don’t sound half bad, do they?

I started by mixing together my dry ingredients, flour, cocoa, brown sugar, baking soda, salt and a bit of cinnamon to top it off.  I love cocoa and cinnamon together.  When paired correctly, its magic.  (I was seriously food nerdy while mixing up these muffins.  Overly excited.)

Once I stirred the dry ingredients together, I added some quick cooking oats.  To keep it “healthy”, right?

Next, the wet ingredients, eggs, melted butter, buttermilk, some freshly brewed coffee and vanilla.  Wet was poured into dry, and before I knew it, I had an amazing, chocolatey, mocha lovin’ batter in front of me.  If you’re not a coffee lover, don’t fret.  The muffin isn’t overly coffee flavored.  If anything, the coffee just enhances the chocolate to make it even more chocolatey.

As if that wasn’t good enough, the recipe told me to add some mini chocolate chips next.  So, I did!

The original recipe also calls for chopped walnuts at this point.  I love walnuts, but not in breads, brownies or anything else.  It’s just a weird food “thing” of mine.  However, if you like walnuts, feel free to add some.

The recipe said that it made twelve large muffins.  I’m guessing they use a jumbo muffin tin, which actually makes sense because how often do you see a cupcake sized muffin at a bakery anymore?  I just used my regular muffin pans and was able to dish out about 18 of them.

I sprinkled the tops with some coarse, Turbinado sugar and a little more oatmeal (to remind us that it’s healthy, right?) and popped them in the oven.

Pretty soon, I had that sweet, wonderful bakery smell wafting through my kitchen.  You could smell the chocolate, the butter, even the cinnamon.  It was perfect.

After I let them cool, I dove right in.  They are certainly chocolatey, but unlike a cupcake, they have a heartiness to them (from that healthy oatmeal!) and a flavor all their own.  They were delicious.  So perfectly delicious, that my girls came home and gobbled a couple of them up with lightning speed.   I have to admit, I helped myself to a second one too.  After all, they’re healthy, right?

MOCHA OATMEAL MUFFINS

Adapted from The Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook