Lockdown here in Sri Lanka has been a mighty boring time. Being stuck at home has sprung me to try new things. One of this things is baking! I love sweets and desserts but I’ve never taken upon the idea of making my own until now. I have very little experience in the kitchen so this was all very new to me. I planned on baking with the help of some of my friends. We decided to get together on the weekend and try out some baking. We decided on making chocolate muffins as that’s one of the easies things you can bake. Next was to select the recipe that we would follow. Luckily we already had most of the ingredients that we needed so from here all that we needed to do was get started with the actual baking.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips

Recipe

1. Line a muffin tin with paper liners. Lightly grease paper liners with nonstick cooking spray.
2. In a large mixing bowl, use a hand mixer to cream together butter and sugar, about two minutes.
3. Beat in eggs until combined. Add in the baking powder, salt, and vanilla and mix briefly.
4. Add in half of flour, mix with hand mixer until just combined, then add in the milk, stirring to combine Scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl and add the remaining flour until just combined.
5. Add the chocolate chips to the batter and use a rubber spatula to gently fold them in.
6. Divide the batter up amongst the 12 muffins. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Let the batter rest while the oven preheats.
7. Bake in the preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Reduce the heat in the oven to 350 degrees after 7 minutes. Watch the muffins closely as the cooking times may vary depending on your oven.
8. Let muffins cool for 5 minutes in the pan before removing them and transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

After letting the batter bake, the muffins turned out great! Overall, this baking session turned out to be a success. This activity was a new challenge for me as I previously had never baked (LO2) but as it turns out I am pretty good at it. To bake the muffins I also had to collaborate with some of my friends as we each did a different parts of the recipe (LO4). I will definitely plan on baking more in the future.