Give Chocolate Muffins A High-Protein Boost With One Creamy Add-In

Chocolate muffins are a sweet breakfast treat or tasty on-the-go snack — but when you're looking for an extra boost of protein, it's likely not the first food you turn to. Still, if a muffin craving hits and you want to get a bigger nutritional benefit from it, consider adding cottage cheese. It's a creamy, protein-packed ingredient that will boost the flavor of your muffins while also giving you some extra protein.

Cottage cheese's chunky, curd-filled texture can be a little off-putting if you're not used to it, but you can always add it to a blender to smooth those curds out. This is best for adding it to muffins if you want to keep the batter the same texture as a standard muffin recipe. At 14 grams of protein per ½ cup, cottage cheese contains so much of the macronutrient because it's made from milk solids, or curds, which contain high amounts of casein protein. It's naturally salty, too, so it helps add flavor to just about anything you're making, from fluffy pancakes to creamy, high-protein mac and cheese.

Baking is a science, which means that any recipe you make from scratch has to contain ingredients that are carefully measured and added at the right time. When prepping your chocolate muffins, consider cottage cheese to be a wet ingredient. So, you should combine it with other wet ingredients first (such as eggs and oil) rather than adding it in with the flour or other dry ingredients. In baking, combining the wet and dry ingredients separately before whisking them together is often necessary to achieve proper texture and avoid clumps. Adding them together all at once is a risky baking shortcut.

Cottage cheese comes in many varieties: low fat, low salt, small curd, large curd, etc. For the best flavor and texture, stick with 4% milk fat cottage cheese. If you buy the variety with a regular salt level (as opposed to the no-salt-added variety), then you won't need to add as much additional salt. While you'll probably add less than a cup of cottage cheese, exactly how much you use will depend on the ratio of your other ingredients, so you'll want to consult your particular recipe for the ideal amount to add or substitute for other wet ingredients.