Chocolate hazelnut muffins for school fayre

I don't cope well with the heat. I'm so glad that the heatwave has ended. Last Tuesday when I accompanied Eddie's class to the swimming pool, I thought I'd have a sunstroke. It was hot and humid, and my face was the colour of the cooked lobster (and I do wear the hat at all times).

My husband has just talked to his parents, and it's +49C in his home town in Italy. Makes me shudder. I don't think I could survive that.

Earlier today Eddie and I went to his school fayre. I was rather reluctant to go, but he begged and begged, and I just tagged along. Thankfully, it wasn't as hot as a few days ago.

Yesterday I baked a batch of chocolate muffins for the fayre. I have adapted the recipe found in Eric Lanlard's Totally Chocolate book.
I got this book a couple of years ago for Easter from Happy Eggs PR, suggesting to try one of the seasonal recipes. I confess I haven't tried the egg cups recipe, nor cooked anything from the book.
I have way too many cook books, and really need to sort through them and take some of them to the charity shop.

If you don't have the book, you can find the original recipe for chocolate and hazelnut muffins online.

Since I needed more than six muffins, I have doubled the amount of all ingredients. I used milk chocolate rather than dark one. My kids prefer milk chocolate. I also used more milk as the cake batter was very thick to spoon into the muffin cases. I couldn't find any chocolate chips, but an Easter chocolate bunny, chopped finely, worked fine instead of chocolate chips.

Eric decorated his muffins with chopped hazelnuts, I used sugar stars and chocolate jazzies (buttons with sprinkles) also known as rainbow drops. I placed them on top of the warm chocolate, spread over the top of each muffin, to "glue" them to the top.

You can use Nutella or a supermarket own chocolate hazelnut spread to cut the costs.

These are lovely rich muffins, which you can decorate in a variety of toppings.