M&S Bakery Chocolate Muffin

I popped into the Marks & Spencers near me after lectures yesterday, hoping to find their melt in the middle chocolate puddings. Unfortunately, being a small 'food to go' shop in the station, besides the many sandwiches on offer for commuters and office workers, there wasn't much else in the way of chocolatey heaven, and both the rhubarb and jam puddings didn't really justify me splurging out my week's savings.
Damnit, I want chocolate! ;)


So I'm going to cheat a little - when I was back at home last week, my mum bought me a muffin, freshly baked, from the M&S bakery. I have fond memories of that place, and as a kid I'd always look forward to the occasional treat if we were passing by that way. (Usually it revolved around chocolate!)
On a side note - Marks, if you're reading this, bring back the in-store bakery Chocochino muffins! They were simply DIVINE, and although you do four in a pre-packaged version, they lack the gooey center that the bakery muffins had, and fall short of the originals by far.
Anyway, back onto the review in question.

(NB - not my image, since I ate this last Tuesday!). Despite having shoved said muffin into a bag, carrying it on the train journey and then on the tube, then eating it the day after it was bought, the muffin was still intact, and not at all stale. The initial first bite - wonderful, and though there perhaps wasn't enough chocolate flavour, it was still good. 

Going by my old childhood tradition, I popped it in the microwave for a couple of seconds, warming the muffin and allowing the chocolate chips to melt ever-so-slightly. And I'm glad I did! This really added something to the taste, and the muffin was instantly more satisfying. (Those chocolate chips, by the way, are fabulous. I had to restrain myself from pulling them off individually!) There was also a little surprise inside the muffin - the middle had a blob of some gooey, not-quite-chocolate filling, and again, this added an extra something. (Can you tell I like melting middles?)

Overall, an enjoyable muffin. I'll give it extra pointers as it survived a battering journey, and didn't taste stale even though I ate it the day after. It could have done with being a tad more rich in the chocolate flavour department, perhaps with more dark in the mix?

If you have to decide between this and a tesco-direct bakery muffin, go for M&S. It's worth the extra cash.

(On a side note, my sister says the Costa chocolate muffins are good too, and -wait for it-, have a melty middle as well. I'll have to get one of those to review and compare sometime!)

Summary:

Mark out of 10: 8

Cost: ?

Nutrition:

Calories (kcal) - 470   Sugars (g) - 39.0    Fat (g) - 23.3   Saturates (g) - 5.2    Salt (g) - 0.75