I don't often trust the muffin recipes that tell you to mix dry and wet ingredients in two separate bowls then just combine them. That's because I tried that method for a few times and the results were always tough muffins. I have more confident in the recipes starting with creaming butter and sugar together. But now I've come to realize that maybe I was the one to blame. When folding wet ingredients into dry mixture, it seemed like I always overmixed, and I didn't stop before I got a very smooth batter. Apparently that's not the way. The key here is mixing until just combined, and it's completely fine if the batter is not smooth, because that's the way it should be.
This recipe for chocolate buttermilk muffins is a very good one and I'd like to use it again and again. The muffins are soft and fluffy with fantastic chocolate aroma. They all look cute and neat that they could as well be put in a box to gift someone. Surely the recipient will honestly love the little cakes.
There's one more thing I want to say. I wanted to make the red, white and blue frosting for July 4th. but this was the first time I made frosting and also the first time I used icing colors so my experience in this was close to none. And I also didn't want to use too much color. That was why my frosting didn't look blue and red, but more like cyan and pink. Someone in my family said the frosting looked more like Christmas instead of July 4th. Anyway, the frosting was so delicious that I guess I'll follow that recipe the next time I make buttercream frosting, and the next time, and the next time...
Recipe after the jump
