Recipe Details

Since being married, there’s two things I miss a lot – the oven at my mom’s place and my cat Chad. I live for the oven. A decent oven placed strategically makes cooking and baking a lot easier. It’s the star of the show when you’re preparing a few dishes on the stove – make something wonderful and stash it in the oven, time it and come back when it’s ready and voila! A meal or dessert done. I always had a stash of cafe-style muffins in the fridge back when I was living with my mum. My mum, being obsessed over bananas, used to have plenty of overripe bananas which I forbade her to throw out. Mash them up, save it in the fridge or freezer, then chuck in into your chocolate muffin or chocolate cake batter. Ahh life’s simple pleasures, me thinks. If there’s one thing I’m navigating through married life is that I’ve had to restart the process of making myself comfortable. You see, I was set on living a life at my mum’s place till I can afford and am eligible to get my own place (that’s when I hit 35 years old as a single woman). Then one day cupid came and I got myself married to a lovely man, and hey, I’m not complaining! It’s difficult sometimes, but what is marriage without troubles, am I right? I do miss the kitchen I built with my mum, but in the mean time, allow me to scroll through Pinterest and plan our new house way in advance. I was looking through my Instagram one day and I realised it’s been a long time since I baked muffins (also, I miss having a stand mixer ready and waiting on the kitchen countertop to be used). I remember bringing them to class one day, and my classmates went crazy. I remember bringing them to work and my colleagues hating me for spoiling their diet. And now, I have a memory of feeding them to Faeez so he won’t want to spend $5 at a cafe for a muffin I make at home. Anyhoos, the secret to delicious chocolate muffins is in the cocoa. I only have Valhorna cocoa powder stocked in my pantry, and if I do run low on them and can’t swing by my go to place to get them, Ghirardelli chocolate cocoa powder from NTUC works perfectly fine.