Bakery-Style Chocolate Chip Muffins
Sour cream keeps these tender under a domed, crackly-sugar top loaded with chocolate chips — a lunchbox staple, not a cupcake in disguise.
- Serves
- 12
- Prep
- 15 min
- Cook
- 20 min
- Written
Method
-
Preheat the oven to 425°F and line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners.
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Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl.
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In a separate bowl, whisk the melted butter, sour cream, eggs, milk, and vanilla until smooth.
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Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and fold just until no streaks of flour remain, then fold in 1¼ cups of the chocolate chips — the batter should be thick and lumpy, not smooth.
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Divide the batter among the muffin cups, mounding it well above the rim, and press the remaining chocolate chips into the tops along with the turbinado sugar.
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Bake at 425°F for 5 minutes, then, without opening the door, lower the oven to 350°F and continue baking until the tops are domed and golden and a skewer comes out with only melted chocolate clinging to it, 14 to 16 minutes more.
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Cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then transfer to a rack to cool the rest of the way.
Notes
The sour cream is doing the real work here — it keeps the crumb tender and slightly tangy days after baking, which plain butter-and-milk muffins can’t manage. Reserving a handful of chips to press into the tops instead of folding them all into the batter means every muffin looks as loaded as it tastes, and the turbinado sugar bakes into a crackly shell that a streusel would only get in the way of.
These freeze well once fully cooled — wrap individually and microwave from frozen for about 45 seconds. Swap in mini chips if you want the chocolate distributed more evenly through the crumb rather than in pockets.