Unlike my last muffins, these are quite sweet.

I seem to be in the habit of using up leftover ricotta in desserts, whether they be cakes or muffins, and I’m fine with that. Last weekend, I made my Ricotta-Velveeta® Mac ‘n Cheese for a neighborhood picnic, and I bought way more ricotta than I needed, just because I’m happy to have an excuse to use it up. This time, instead of adapting recipes from the web, I decided to go back to Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio and start with a basic 2-egg muffin formula (p. 71)—2 eggs, 8 oz flour, 8 oz milk, 4 oz butter, 4 oz sugar, 1 tsp salt, 2 tsp baking powder—and fit in my changes. I guess ricotta could be substituted for part of the butter, but who really wants to omit butter? If you want your muffin to be a little lighter, you might decide to play with the butter. I found that it works better to take out some of the milk, and I decided how much by adding it last, since you can’t take out what you’ve already added. 🙄 I like a thick muffin batter—I think I’ve said that before—and a rather dense muffin, so I poured in the milk 2 oz at a time until I was satisfied. I ended up using only 4 oz of milk and 8 oz of ricotta. FYI I did weigh the ingredients.

The chocolate chunks and flaked coconut were an attempt to please both me and my husband. He’ll eat anything chocolate, and I’m in love with Bob’s Red Mill® unsweetened flaked coconut. It has a great chew and just the right coconut flavor. At the last minute, after going back and forth, I threw in some good vanilla, just to round out all the flavors.