Chocolate Muffins are a tried-and-tested bakery-style recipe! Learn the tricks to moist, delicious, and flavorful chocolate muffins.
More popular muffin recipes: Mini Muffins, Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins, and Chocolate Peanut Butter Muffins.
My Favorite Chocolate Muffins
Growing up, we didn’t get a Costco membership (even with 9 people in our family!) until I was about to graduate high school. Once we did, I finally discovered the “magic” of Costco’s double chocolate muffins. If you’d asked me as a senior in high school what my favorite dessert was, I wouldn’t have even hesitated to tell you: “Costco chocolate muffins!”
So, while these aren’t the typical healthy (ish) muffins you’ll find on my site, I’m so excited to finally share a bakery-style, moist and delicious, double chocolate muffin recipe with you all. I’ve been slowly tweaking and working at this recipe for a few months and never got it up in time for the holiday season, so bear with me as I share these amidst all the healthy meals/treats you’re probably hoping to find this January. Or make these healthy-ish chocolate banana muffins in the meantime!
The process for these muffins is pretty similar to most muffin recipes, but here is a quick breakdown:
How do you make the best Chocolate Muffins?
- Sift dry ingredients: The flour, cocoa powders, baking agents, and salt all get sifted together into a large bowl. Then you’ll toss in the chocolate chips. By adding the chocolate chips to the dry ingredients, you’ll get an even dispersion of chips throughout the muffins.
- Beat wet ingredients: Beat the eggs and both sugars until thickened. Next, stream in the oil and butter while beating. Finally, you’ll mix in the sour cream, buttermilk, and vanilla extract.
- Combine wet and dry: Add the dry ingredients to the wet and beat until JUST combined. Overmixing causes the gluten in the flour to activate; that will result in denser/drier muffins.
- Bake: Fill greased and lightly floured muffin tins with the batter and bake! The muffins are done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean or with moist crumbs.
Tips for making homemade Chocolate Muffins:
Tips for making homemade Chocolate Muffins:- Use good-quality cocoa powder: The better the cocoa powder you use, the better these muffins turn out! While natural cocoa powder is okay in these muffins, I recommend using Dutch-process cocoa to give you the most flavorful and moist muffins. This is my absolute favorite cocoa powder.
- High-quality chocolate: Again, the better the chocolate, the better the flavor! I love Ghirardelli® or Guittard® chips or chopping a good chocolate bar.
- Spoon and level flour measurement: If you pack in too much flour, you’ll get denser/drier muffins. Here’s a great video showing how to properly measure flour for this recipe.
- Don’t overbake: Again to avoid dry muffins, you’ll want to make sure you don’t overbake these muffins — they can go from perfectly moist and fudgy to dry and less flavorful in just a few minutes.
Quick Tip
What is the difference between natural and Dutch-process cocoa? Cocoa si acidic and bitter with a very strong and concentrated chocolate flavor and almost no sweetness– very similar to 100% chocolate. Dutch-process cocoa powder has been processed with an alkaline solution to counter the natural acidity. This makes the flavor less acidic, milder, and more chocolatey and creates a darker and more red color.
Chocolate Muffins FAQs
How do you make Chocolate Muffins without chocolate chips?
This chocolate base of these chocolate muffins comes from a cup of cocoa powder. With that much cocoa powder, you’ll get a rich, chocolatey taste without chocolate chips. While this recipe also calls for chocolate chips, they aren’t necessary; you can simply leave out the chocolate chips (no other changes needed)!
Can I make recipe substitutions?
While it’s best to stick to the recipe, I have tested several substitutes for these muffins:
- Greek yogurt: You can use Greek yogurt in place of sour cream. I recommend using Greek Gods® Whole Fat Honey Vanilla Yogurt (it’s AMAZING). If you use Greek yogurt, make sure it’s full fat.
- Buttermilk: You can make your own buttermilk if you have milk and vinegar or lemon juice.
- To make homemade buttermilk:
- Pour 3/4 cup of milk into a bowl
- Stir in 2 teaspoons of white vinegar or fresh lemon juice
- Let sit for about 5 minutes.
- Add in the recipe in place of regular buttermilk!
- To make homemade buttermilk:
- Cocoa powder: I’ve tested this recipe with natural and Dutch-process cocoa powder — both work beautifully! While I’ll admit the Dutch-process is the BEST, the natural cocoa powder works fine in these muffins.
Storage/Freezing
Cooling muffins:
Once you remove the muffins from the oven, let them sit in the muffin tin for a few minutes before removing them to a wire rack to finish cooling. Remove the muffins after five to eight minutes to avoid the muffins getting soggy as they cool in the pan.
- Cool muffins completely before wrapping and freezing.
- To freeze: Wrap completely in plastic wrap and then place in large freezer bags.
- To thaw: Set out at room temperature, or heat frozen muffins in the microwave.
I hope you love these easy chocolate muffins!
More Baked Goods
- The best Zucchini Bread
- Healthy-ish Chocolate Chip Muffins
- Lemon Poppyseed Bread (with Greek yogurt)
- Bakery style Nutella Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Super popular Carmelitas
Chocolate Muffins
Equipment
- Muffin pan
- Mixer
Ingredients
Dry Ingredients
- 2 cups flour
- 1/2 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder see note 1
- 1/2 cup cocoa powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 2-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips
- 1-1/4 cups chocolate chips
Wet Ingredients
- 3 large eggs
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 3/4 cup light brown sugar lightly packed
- 1/4 cup canola oil or vegetable oil
- 1/4 cup unsalted butter melted and cooled
- 1 cup full-fat sour cream or full-fat Greek yogurt
- 3/4 cup buttermilk see note 2
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350℉. Lightly grease with cooking spray and flour a 12-cup muffin pan and set aside.
- In a large bowl, sift together the flour (make sure to spoon and level your measurement so you don't pack in too much flour), both kinds of cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Stir together and then add in the mini and regular chocolate chips. Stir to coat the chips in the dry ingredients. This keeps them from sinking to the bottom.
- In another large bowl, use a hand mixer to beat the eggs at medium-high speed. You can also use a stand mixer with a whisk attachment. Slowly add in the granulated sugar and then brown sugar while continuing to beat. Beat until the mixture is pale and thickened, scraping the sides of the bowl as needed. Slowly pour in oil while beating, then melted and cooled butter until completely combined. Beat in the sour cream, buttermilk, and vanilla extract until incorporated.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and fold until just combined. You don't want to overmix here or you'll end up with dense muffins.
- Spoon the batter evenly into the prepared muffin tin. Fill muffin cups 3/4 full.
- Bake for 15-21 minutes and be sure to watch carefully. As soon as a toothpick comes out clean or with moist crumbs, they are done baking.
- Remove and allow to cool in the pan for 5-8 minutes before removing to a cooling rack to finish cooling.
Video
Recipe Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
These look delicious. I’m going out today to look for the Dutch cocoa. Would there be a way to sneak in some grated zucchini into this recipe? I love how you talk about healthy-ish and this time of year I have so many zucchini I’d like to sneak them in where I can! Thank you!
I’d try this instead! 🙂 https://www.chelseasmessyapron.com/healthy-chocolate-greek-yogurt-zucchini-bread/