Chocolate Walnut Fig Muffins Recipe

Chocolate Walnut Fig Muffins Recipe

An Original Recipe Brought to You
From the Farmhouse Kitchen at Root & Branch Farms

 

Ingredients:

  • 3¼ cups all-purpose flour (organic all-purpose flour is highly recommended) PLUS 1 tablespoon of flour for tossing the chocolate chips in
  • ¼ cup organic cacao powder (NOT cocoa powder)
  • 1 cup sugar (I use organic raw cane sugar – I prefer the Florida Crystals brand which is available at most grocery stores)
  • 2 tablespoons baking powder (I use Trader Joe’s baking powder which is aluminum-free)
  • 1½ teaspoons salt
  • 3 eggs (or vegan egg equivalent)
  • 1 cup milk or soy milk (I use Silk Original soy milk)
  • ½ cup oil
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla (I use Trader Joe’s Organic Alcohol-Free Pure Vanilla)
  • 16 ounces of figs (about 2½ cups) – either fresh or frozen work, but I created this recipe using frozen figs
  • 1¼ cups walnuts, coarsely chopped
  • 1½ cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (I recommend that you freeze them the day before)


Instructions:

  1. If using fresh figs, rinse thoroughly and remove the stems. If using frozen figs, snap off the stems while they are still frozen. Then allow the figs to thaw for approximately 20 minutes or so, until they are fairly easy to cut, but not mushy. (The time to thaw will depend on how warm your kitchen is, but the key is to cut them before they totally thaw and get mushy.)
  2. While the figs are thawing, chop the walnuts; set aside.
  3. Cut the figs into small bite-size pieces. I typically use a combination of different varieties of figs for these muffins. For smaller figs like Chicago Hardy, I cut them into eighths. For larger figs like Celeste or Brown Turkey, I cut them into sixteenths. Set the cut figs aside.
  4. Grease bottoms of muffin cups in a muffin pan, or use paper liners. I definitely recommend using paper liners, as it makes washing / clean-up much easier and prevents the muffins from sticking to the pan. In particular, I recommend using grease-proof muffin liners if available.
  5. In a large bowl, add the flour, cacao powder, sugar, baking powder, and salt to the bowl; stir well.
  6. Heat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
  7. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs (or follow instructions for the vegan egg replacer).
  8. Add the eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla into the dry mixture. Stir gently, being sure not to overmix at this stage.
  9. Add the walnuts and figs (I also add any juice from when the figs were thawing), and mix the batter thoroughly. Make sure there are no flour clumps at the bottom of the bowl.
  10. Add the 1 tablespoon of all-purpose flour into a separate small bowl. Remove the semi-sweet chocolate chips from the freezer and immediately toss them in the flour. (Note: Frozen chocolate chips hold their shape better, don’t completely melt, and are less likely to sink to the bottom of the muffins. If you haven’t frozen the chocolate chips, you can still use room-temperature ones. Tossing the chocolate chips in the flour will further help prevent them from sinking to the bottom of the muffins.)
  11. Add the chocolate chips into the muffin batter, being careful to just add the chocolate chips and leaving the extra flour in the bowl as far as possible.
  12. Stir the batter thoroughly, and double-check that there are no flour clumps at the bottom of the bowl.
  13. Fill the muffin cups almost all the way full (I recommend using a stainless-steel cookie scoop to fill the muffin cups with batter). Note: This recipe yields over two dozen muffins, so you will have to bake in batches unless you have multiple muffin pans. If you do use two separate muffin pans, I recommend baking them next to each other on the same rack in the oven. If you put one pan above the other on different racks, it might cause uneven baking due to oven air flow. If your oven bakes slightly unevenly as many ovens do, and if you are baking with two muffin pans in the oven at the same time, I recommend rotating the muffin pans part-way through baking (left to right and front to back) so that the muffins bake more evenly.
  14. Bake 25 – 26 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean when testing the muffins (clean from batter – there may be some chocolate on the toothpick!).
  15. Allow the muffins to cool in the muffin pan for about 20 minutes. Transfer them to a cooling rack or plate, and allow them to cool for another 30 minutes or more. (If you try to take the paper liners off when the muffins are still too warm, the bottoms of the muffins will stick to the paper and cause the muffins to split. This isn’t as big of a problem if you use grease-proof muffin liners, so that’s one of the reasons I recommend using them.)
  16. Enjoy the muffins plain or with some butter! Store in an air-tight container.

 

Yields 27 – 28 muffins.

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