Bakery-Style Chocolate Chip Muffins

Instructions

1. 1

   Set up the oven and pan

   Put a rack in the middle of the oven and heat it to 425°F (220°C). Line a standard 12-cup muffin pan with paper liners, or grease the cups well with nonstick spray. The blast of high heat at the start is what forces the batter upward into a tall dome, so give the oven a full 20 minutes to come up to temperature.

2. 2

   Whisk the dry ingredients

   In a large bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together for a good 20 seconds. You want the leavening evenly dispersed before any liquid hits it, otherwise you get pockets that rise unevenly.

3. 3

   Combine the wet ingredients

   In a second bowl, whisk both sugars into the melted butter and oil until the mixture looks like wet sand. Add the eggs and whisk hard for about 30 seconds, until smooth and slightly lightened. Whisk in the sour cream, milk, and vanilla until you have a uniform, pourable mixture with no streaks of sour cream left.

4. 4

   Bring the batter together

   Pour the wet mixture over the dry and fold with a flexible spatula, scraping the bottom of the bowl, until you see only a few faint streaks of flour. Add the 1 1/2 cups of chocolate chips and fold maybe five more times to finish combining. Stop while the batter still looks a little rough and lumpy — smooth batter means overmixed, and overmixed muffins bake up tough with tunnels inside.

5. 5

   Rest the batter

   Cover the bowl and let it sit on the counter for 15 minutes while the oven finishes heating. The flour hydrates, the batter thickens noticeably, and that extra thickness is what holds a tall dome instead of spreading flat.

6. 6

   Fill and top

   Divide the batter among the 12 cups, filling each one right to the rim — a scant 1/2 cup each, and a large cookie scoop makes this fast and tidy. Scatter the reserved chocolate chips over the tops and finish with a generous pinch of turbinado sugar on each for crunch.

7. 7

   Bake hot, then drop the heat

   Bake at 425°F for 5 minutes, then reduce the oven to 350°F (175°C) without opening the door and bake another 16 to 18 minutes. They're done when the tops are golden and spring back under a light press, and a toothpick in the center comes out with moist crumbs but no wet batter — aim for crumbs rather than bone-dry, since a few melted chips will always look like raw batter.

8. 8

   Cool

   Let the muffins sit in the pan for 5 minutes, then lift them onto a wire rack. Leaving them in the pan longer traps steam and softens those crisp tops you just worked for.

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Baker's Tips

• 1.

  Room-temperature eggs, sour cream, and milk matter more than usual here: cold dairy will firm the melted butter back into little solid flecks and give you a patchy crumb.

• 2.

  Fill the cups all the way to the rim. Half-filled cups give you flat, sad muffins — 12 full cups is the right call, not 15 shallow ones.

• 3.

  Toss the chips with a teaspoon of the measured flour before folding them in if you've had trouble with everything sinking to the bottom.

• 4.

  Spoon and level your flour rather than scooping with the measuring cup, or weigh it. Packing the cup can add 20 grams or more and dries out the crumb.

• 5.

  Swap in chopped chocolate from a bar for puddly, irregular pockets of chocolate instead of neat chip shapes.

• 6.

  If your oven runs hot, check at 14 minutes after the temperature drop. Muffins go from perfect to dry in about three minutes.

Equipment

• Standard 12-cup muffin pan
• Paper muffin liners
• Two mixing bowls
• Whisk
• Flexible spatula
• Large cookie scoop or 1/4-cup measure
• Wire cooling rack
• Kitchen scale

Storage