I wanted to make waffles last saturday, but didn’t feel like standing in front of the waffle iron all afternoon. So I tweaked the waffle dough a bit and made muffins instead. They turned out rich and chocolatey but not too sweet thanks to a bit of coffee and some super dark chocolate. They have kinda the same flavor profile as the speculoos cheesecake, but are at the same time totally different. Not as in your face. A bit subtler and cozier.

Cocoa, just like coffee, comes in many different flavors, and some are quite bitter. I mainly use Hasslacher’s Drinking Chocolate when I need dark chocolate for baking, because it comes without any sugar, is available in chips and just tastes great! There’s barely any bitterness. (No, I don’t get paid to say this! I’m just a satisfied customer!)

You can use whatever chocolate you prefer, as long as it’s a dark one and has about 70% of cocoa solids.

For 12 big / up to 24 normal sized muffins you need:

• 250g salted butter
• 250g sugar
• 200g flour of your choice (I used freshly milled einkorn)
• 50g potato starch (you can sub cornstarch)
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp arabian coffee spice mix
• 4 large eggs
• 125g espresso
• 100g chocolate (70% cocoa) – I used 70g chocolate with 100% cocoa and 30g cocoa butter
• totally optional: 2 Tbsp coffee liqueur

Melt the chocolate (and cocoa butter) in the hot espresso. Mix everything together and scoop the batter into muffin papercups. I used the extra high tulip ones and got exactly 12. If you use the flatter, regular ones you’ll get 20-24.

Bake in a pre-heated oven (fan on) at 160°C / 320F.

The normal sized ones take about 20 minutes, the big ones in the tulip papers needed 35 minutes.

Let the muffins cool on a rack and enjoy them with a huge cup of coffee.