Craving chocolate? How about a Muffin?

I have been on a chocolate kick lately...it's just about all I want to eat.  I'm really not usually like that...I like chocolate but I can usually resist the temptation.  Not these days!  I want chocolate and I really want it a lot.  Who knows or understands these demands the body puts out, but I'm not arguing.  If you want chocolate, I figure, have chocolate.  Yeah, I think being sick for too many days has made me a little crazy, but just bear with me..  :)

I decided on chocolate chip muffins as a way to take care of two problems:

1) No more open chocolate chip bag in the pantry. Very tempting!

2) At least when I eat the chocolate, I'm getting a bit more bang for my buck.

So, I decided on a muffin with chocolate chips and dried cherries.  Oh my mouth was watering just thinking about it.  But, then I had a thought.  Hubby hates cherries and chocolate together.  What to do?  What to do?  Well, I did what I did with the coconut almond cups.  I split the batter in half, and made half of them with dried cherries and mixed peanut butter and sprinkled peanut butter chips on top of the rest.  Crisis averted.  Now back to my baking.

I found a recipe on Food Network and although I wasn't planning on a chocolate muffin, the recipe there just sounded too good and so one more layer of chocolate was added to my muffin plan.

Chocolate Chip Muffins

Adapted from Food Network

1 3/4 c all purpose flour

2 t baking powder

1/2 t baking soda

2 T cocoa powder

3/4 c sugar

3/4 c milk chocolate chips

1 c milk

1/3 c vegetable oil

1 egg

1 t vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa, sugar, and chocolate chips into a large bowl. Pour all the liquid ingredients into a separate bowl and mix gently. Mix the dry and wet ingredients together. At this point, I separated my batters, and added 1/2 c peanut butter to one and 1/2 c dried chopped cherries into the other.  You can mix anything in you'd like.

Pour into either a greased or paper lined muffin tin.  You can sprinkle additional chips on top of muffins before baking if you'd like.  Bake for 20 minutes or until the muffins are risen and springy.

These are really very moist, delicious muffins.  I hope you enjoy them!