Chocolate Surprise Egg Muffins (and Flatkins)

There are two surprises lurking in the title of this recipe. Two thoroughly mysterious surprises, I should add, though the second one’s more or less spelt out. Surprises for me, too, though one more than the other.

I’m spending time with my daughter, who’s spectacularly picky. But that only applies to lunch, breakfast and supper (the non-sweet kind. If breakfast or supper is bread with honey or Nutella, or better yet, crêpes, there’s no fuss). When it comes to desserts, there are certainly more that she likes than her dad does. Ninka made a lovely job of eating the kid’s lunch I wrote about earlier, so she was definitely due a reward. We’re making muffins. And if we’re making muffins, what kind? Well, obviously. Chocolate.

OK, but why a surprise egg? Well, my little girl is very fond of Kinder Surprise eggs. Though she likes the surprises better than the eggs. Usually when I give her one, it’s just before a proper meal. Then it starts: “Daddy, Daddy, can you crack the egg open for me? I’ll just look at the surprise, and you can put the egg in our little egg bowl.” And yes, I do have a little bowl where I’ve been putting those surprise egg halves, and I’ve accumulated 6 of them. So how about using them for these muffins? Why not?

Right, but what’s with the “flatkins”? A while back (I rarely bake sweet things and try not to eat them myself) I bought some paper cases. Not very big ones. Unfortunately they’re pretty hopeless for muffins: what you get is more like biscuits that rise a little and spread a lot (I think the cases are too thin to hold the batter and just splay out at the sides). So Ninka and I called them “flatkins” (they’re not in the photo because they’re not very photogenic, but you can see them here). That wasn’t all we made, though (these ones you can see in the photo). Dad, thinking ahead just in case, made three cases out of kitchen foil, so we actually got 3 muffins of a respectable height.

As usual with me, the recipe is incredibly easy. I use a blender to make it. And of course all the fun is in making the muffins together rather than eating them (though I have to admit they were devilishly good. Check the figures below to see how many we ate). Be warned, you can get absolutely filth… I mean, a little messy doing this 😉

At a glance:

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Baking time: about 20 minutes (the flatkins were done in 17, while a skewer came out dry after about 22 minutes for the bigger ones)

Oven temperature: 190 degrees Celsius

How many people does it serve? A big dad and a little daughter for two days (we made 12 flat ones and three big ones. Today Ninka ate 4 flatkins and Dad ate 3 flatkins and 1 big one, so for tomorrow we have 5 small ones and 2 big ones)

How many calories? Ninka doesn’t count calories, and considering the above (that is, today’s tally), Dad would like to forget all about it

Ingredients for Kinder Surprise muffins:

Wet

• 1 egg
• half a cup of olive oil
• 1 cup of milk (I used 0.5% fat)

Dry

• one and a half cups of wheat flour
• half a bar of dark chocolate 
• the chocolate from 6 Kinder Surprise eggs (if you’re wondering what that means, read the intro. Of course, you can use half a bar of milk chocolate instead if you want a flavour similar to ours)
• a tablespoon of baking powder
• a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda 
• half a cup of sugar
• two tablespoons of sweetened drinking chocolate powder for children (we used Nesquik)
• a sachet of vanilla sugar

The recipe (takes two people: a grown-up and a child):

Here we go. I set the oven to 190 degrees Celsius, get two bowls out and measure the ingredients. Meanwhile, Ninka’s job is to crush all the egg halves into little pieces and drop them in a bowl. As she goes, she also has time to tip the dry ingredients into the bowl where the pieces of egg chocolate are landing.

Once all the dry ingredients are in the bowl and Ninka’s still crumbling the chocolate eggs, I chop half a bar of dark chocolate into little pieces. I tip them into Ninka’s bowl and get on with mixing the wet ingredients.

I blend the egg, milk and olive oil to make a uniform “liquid” (it’s a strange-looking fluid, rather like the stuff you pour into a car radiator). Meanwhile Ninka mixes the dry ingredients (with her hands, naturally).

Once we’ve mixed the contents of our two bowls, Ninka pours the wet ingredients into the dry. I use the blender again to mix the batter. Don’t do it for too long or you’ll blend all the chocolate to nothing. The surprise egg chocolate does get completely blended in, but the hard dark chocolate stays in small chunks that melt beautifully as the muffins bake. That’s the chocolate muffin batter ready.

Now we take our muffin cases (don’t worry if you haven’t any. A bit of kitchen foil makes perfect cases for big muffins and, after all, the shape isn’t the main thing) and fill them just short of the rim (one big spoon for me, another for Ninka). They mustn’t overflow.

We set them on a baking tray and into the oven they go. Depending on the size (see the timings above), we bake them for about 20 minutes. After 15 minutes I start testing them with a long cocktail stick to see if they’re dry inside. If so, out they come.

They ought to cool a little, but… who’s going to wait that long? You can always blow on them. Enjoy!