Raspberry chocolate oatmeal muffins

I wanted to make muffins, and I was thinking of making blueberry oatmeal muffins, because I'd remembered them being awesome. However, I didn't have any blueberries, and I wanted to put chocolate into the muffins. I solved problem number one by walking down to the corner store (a much faster prospect than digging out my car and attempting to get out of the driveway), but all they had by way of frozen fruit was raspberries. For $7. Yikes. But, I haven't bought any food yet this week and it's already Wednesday, so I felt like it would be ok to splurge on frozen raspberries. It was a big bag, anyway.

I walked back home with the raspberries (and milk. I'd needed milk, too.), and looked up some recipes for raspberry oatmeal muffins, and everything kept pointing back to this person's muffin recipe. I figured if enough other people liked her recipe, I'd follow it, too. The big difference between her muffins and the kinds I usually make is that she was making a butter muffin instead of an oil muffin. I find butter to be too many extra steps, but at least this recipe was just melting it, as opposed to creaming it or some other labor-intensive process. The end result was delicious, but raspberries and chocolate are a match made in heaven, so I was sort of expecting deliciousness. Its not a very sweet muffin, but again, the raspberries and chocolate take care of that. I've posted the recipe below, but I followed the original one almost exactly. Almost. I am incapable of following a recipe as it's given to me...

Raspberry chocolate oatmeal muffins
Made 12 big muffins

1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4C sugar
1/2C (1 stick) butter, melted
1C milk
1C rolled oats (not quick oats)
1tsp lemon juice
1/2C white flour + 2 tbs white flour
1/2C whole wheat flour
1/2tsp salt
1tsp baking powder
1/2tsp baking soda
some cinnamon
1C frozen raspberries
1/2C chocolate chunks

Combine the oats and milk and lemon juice in a bowl, and let it sit. The original recipe said let it sit 1hr, I got impatient at 30min, and that was just fine. Buttermilk is an acceptable substitute for milk+lemon juice (which should be vinegar, anyway, but I didn't have any).

Preheat your oven to 375F.

Melt the butter.

Put the egg, vanilla, sugar, and butter into the bowl with the milk and the oats. Stir that around thoroughly. Dump all the dry goods (flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder) on top, and mix those around lightly so they're uniform before you fold them in to the wet stuff. Add the raspberries and chocolate, and fold that into the batter. Don't overmix things.

Put the batter into lined muffin tins, and bake for 25-30min. I think mine took just about 30min, the raspberries add a lot of moisture. The muffin tops will be golden brown, and spring back when you poke them, when they're done. Remove to a cooling rack, and enjoy!


The muffins were really crumbly, but, moist and delicious at the same time, if you can get your head around that. Mostly, they were just awesomely raspberry-y and chocolate-y, which is what I was going for.