Eggless Chocolate Chip Muffins

Today, the November 14th is celebrated as Children's Day throughout India and I extend my hearty wishes to all the children a Happy Children's Day. May your childhood be filled with loads of fun, thrill and happiness and may you sail a smooth journey to a better bright future. After all childhood is all about innocence and playfulness, it's about joy and freedom to enjoy and have fun.

Coming to think of my childhood, I have had good share of fun in my childhood days. Thanks to my dad's job, we moved places and changed many schools. New place, new school, new friends, new uniforms, new teachers were common to us and we were quite open about accepting this change. In fact, in a way we were accustomed to this as our parents had tuned us to accept the fact that we would be loyal to a particular school only for sometime :) It was not until I reached my ninth grade that we decided to settle down and not change schools anymore as that would hamper our studies.

Like every other kid, I too have fond memories of my school. Infact there are so many that it would be hard to jot them all here. Children's day was always kind to us. The day meant no uniforms, no books, only loads of fun filled entertainment and games, all to compensate for the stress from competition we had taken from teachers, parents and society to prove ourselves better! Probably one of those days when going to school meant no burden to us. Our school would organize fun activities with teachers taking part actively to hold cultural performances followed by games, prizes and sweets that would make us kids a day to enjoy and remember. While through the year long we kids would carry bags that could easily be weighed in a couple of kilos, on Children's Day we were allowed to come hands free to have loads of fun. After all that celebration I probably looked forward to sweet distribution as my personal favorite part of the day. You'll know I was a foodie even as a kid :)

Nonetheless, how can an occasion be celebrated without any scrumptious food? Since it is a day for the kids, I made these easy and delicious muffins on this Children's Day to treat the kids. The recipe is egg-free and yet another adaptation from Nita Mehta's cookbook. Enjoy a scrumptious Children’s Day!

Chocolate Chip Muffins

INGREDIENTS

1 1/2 cups All purpose flour
1 cup Thick Curd/Yogurt
1 cup Sugar minus 1 tbsp
1/2 tsp Baking soda
1 1/4 tsp Baking powder
1/2 cup Butter
1 1/2 tsp Vanilla extract
A fist full of Chocolate Chips

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 200 deg C for 10 mins. Layer the muffin tin with muffin liners.

Sieve all purpose flour twice and keep aside. Cream the sugar and curd until sugar completely dissolves. Add baking powder, baking soda to the creamed mixture and mix well. Leave aside for 5 mins and till bubbles appear on the mixture. Now add in vanilla essence and softened butter and beat well. Next slowly add all purpose flour in portions at a time and blend with wet ingredients. Beat well with a till creamy and thick. Finally fold in the chocolate chips gently. Pour the batter to the prepared muffin liners and bake in the pre-heated oven for 15-20 mins (time depends on the oven you use). The top should be golden brown in color and centres cooked.

I used cooking dark chocolate chips in my cake batter which gave us gooey chocolate patches as we bite into the cake. You may also use chocolate chunks for the same effect. If you want firm chocolate bites, use regular chocolate chips (the ones we get in Nilgiris outlet, Bangalore) that don't melt easily. With addition of chocolate chips/chunks, this makes great tea-time goodies for the little ones. Every kid would love to sink his teeth into one and grab his second and third.