Sour Cream Chocolate Chip Muffins #MuffinMonday

These sour cream chocolate chip muffins are sweet but not too sweet, with fluffy insides perfectly complemented by the semi-sweet chocolate chips. Bake a batch for someone you love!

For the relatively transient life that I have led, I have some good friends who have been my friends for a very long time. I was an expat as a small child but we moved to the Houston area when I was going into fourth grade, after my parents divorced.

My father continued with the expat life, always making sure that my sisters and I had bedrooms wherever he lived and his employer always paid for at least one flight a year, when we would spend most of the three months of summer in his latest location. He would have had us year round if he could (always nice to be wanted!) but Mom would never have given us up and he often lived in places where the expat children ended up going to boarding school anyway because of the lack of a good quality local English language school. (Talking to you, Negritos, Peru and Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei.)

Once again, anyhoo (feel like I have been digressing a lot lately) we moved to Houston, my mother, two sisters and I in the summer between my third and fourth grade years. Mother didn’t think moving back to New Iberia, LA as a young (unwilling, as it were) divorcee was a good idea and I am sure that she was right. Goodness knows the people of the big, progressive city of Houston were judgmental enough. We are talking about the Seventies, folks, and I was one of only two children of divorced parents in my entire fourth grade class of 60 children (two homerooms.) I don’t even want to tell you what those statistics are now but, suffice to say, that there are a lot of families and children in pain out there.

Dear me, but the start of this post is depressing! Let me go on to say that the friends I made in that fourth grade class are still some of my best friends today. Without explanation or excuse, we can get together and, frankly, sometimes act like fourth graders or perhaps 12^th graders because there is often alcohol involved. (Hey, judgers, the drinking age was 18 back then so all of us most of us were legal.)

Last Thursday one of those dear friends was in the hospital recovering from surgery. She was blessed by the presence of her mother, elder son, only daughter and a caring sister I had just missed greeting. I arrived with these muffins for the nurses, so they would take extra good care of her. I would have volunteered to stay the night but she was being ably cared for by her excellently raised daughter, whom I trained briefly in nurse bribery and cajoling. I hung around until the on-call doctor appeared and we got her meds changed from those that were making her sick (there was some discussion of a replacement Jack Daniels IV, which was rejected) and then I handed over the bribery muffins and responsibility, secure that she was in good hands.

Sour Cream Chocolate Chip Muffins

If you need people to see things your way or to take care of a loved one, these muffins seem to work pretty well. Also, they are part of Muffin Monday, which is good fun for me. This recipe comes from Taste of Home. Aside from adding more chips, this recipe was made as written because you don’t need to mess with a pretty good thing.

Ingredients

1-1/2 cups or 190g all-purpose flour (I used King Arthur Unbleached White Wheat.)
2/3 cup or 132g sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 cup (8 ounces) or 240ml sour cream
5 tablespoons or 1/3 cup or 70g butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips (Original recipe called for 3/4 cup but what’s a 1/4 cup of chocolate between friends? The difference between “I like you a whole lot” and “I love you,” that’s what.)

Method
 Line a muffin tin with paper muffin cups or spray with non-stick spray. Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Mix it around a little and make a little well in the middle.

Combine the egg, sour cream, butter and vanilla.

Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened.

Fold in the chocolate chips.

Fill your muffin cups three-fourths full.

Yay! I bought a new muffin tin. I didn't realize how old and grotty mine had gotten till I started taking photos!

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for five minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack.

Enjoy!

You might also be interested in these muffin recipes:
Sheila's Mexican Cornbread
Quick Bread Breakfast Muffins
Banana Bacon Peanut Butter Chip Muffins