Days are short and cold and the sun rarely makes an appearance in Stockholm this time of the season. It’s an excuse good as any to indulge in deep and rich dark chocolate treats. These muffins will fill your belly, warm your heart, smudge your fingers with chocolate and put a shining smile on your lips. On a quick glance they look like the naughtiest treats in town, but they are actually not as bad as they seem. Our muffins are stuffed with whole grain rye, coconut milk, natural sweeteners and if you steal one straight from the oven, bitter dark chocolate will still be runny on the top.
All Danish people are familiar with the rye + chocolate combination. Danes have this weird but yummy habit of putting thin pieces of chocolate – pålægschokolade – on a piece of rye bread and call it breakfast. It truly is a delicious combination, the richness and sour tang of the rye goes so well together with the darkness and bitter sweetness of the chocolate. But let’s not fool ourselves – this is by all means a dessert, not breakfast, whatever the Danes might claim.
We often use rye when baking bread, pizza or pancakes, but this was the first time we used it in muffins. It works really well. They rise quite a bit when baked and are less dense than you might expect. But they are not the super airy and light kind of muffins that we usually bake during the summer. No, these are deep and rich. One is enough to fill your belly. They are dairy free and you could probably replace the eggs with chia seeds or some other egg replacer to make them entirely vegan. We haven’t tried it ourselves so please leave a comment if you try it, we’d love to hear your method.
Double Chocolate Rye Muffins
Makes 12 large muffins
This recipe is a bit heavy on maple syrup, but it is needed to balance the bitterness from the rye and chocolate. You could replace some of it with a ripe banana or pear for a healthier and fruitier touch.
Dry ingredients
1 scant cup / 240 ml / 150 g whole grain rye flour
1 cup / 240 ml / 125 g fine spelt flour
6 tbsp cacao powder
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp coarse sea salt
Wet ingredients
3 eggs
1 cup /240 ml full-fat coconut milk
2/3 cup / 160 ml maple syrup
2/3 cup / 160 ml cold-pressed olive oil
100 g 75% dark chocolate (of your choice), coarsely chopped
Preheat the oven to 400°F / 200°C. Line a muffin pan with paper liners. Sift together all dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl, save half of the sea salt for topping. Crack the eggs in a separate bowl and beat them for about a minute. Then add coconut milk, maple syrup and olive oil while constantly stirring. Add the dry mixture to the wet mixture. Chop the dark chocolate and add half of it to the batter. Use a spatula to carefully fold everything until combined. Divide the batter into the muffin tins and top with the rest of the dark chocolate. Bake for about 18 minutes. Sprinkle with sea salt and serve. Best enjoyed still warm from the oven.
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Dear Friends! We will teach a Nutrition, Cooking & Yoga workshop that will take place in Lisbon, Portugal 5–6 April. We are collaborating with the yoga center Casa Vinyasa in central Lisbon to arrange a weekend workshop where we all will cook and do yoga together. Luise will have a nutrition class before we start cooking together. If there is any interest, David has also agreed to hold a half-day workshop in food photography and styling. Let us know when signing up, if you’d be interested in that and we’ll make room for it. To get more information about the weekend and how to sign up, send an email to: info@casavinyasa.com
Hoping to see you there!
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