Better-than-bakery chocolate muffins! These richly chocolate muffins are made entirely from scratch using cocoa powder and chocolate chips. Read on for tips on how to get soft, fluffy muffins every time, and the key ingredients that make this muffin recipe crafted for perfection.
I quit my job this week. 😳
On Monday I turned in my 2-weeks notice to my wonderful, fantastic job of over 4 1/2 years so that I can work full time on Sugar Spun Run. I’m an emotional melting pot of anxiety, excitement, elation and trepidation right now. “But what if the internet explodes?” Zach has rolled his eyes at that question roughly 6 million times so far, but here we are, and as nervous as I seem to be about the stability of the internet, I’m really happy to be here.
I’ll publish a post in the future to go into more detail about how this all came to happen (and so quickly), but for now I just wanted to share that fun bit of news with you, and thank you from the bottom of my heart for following along with my blog (or just clicking over to this recipe from Pinterest or Google, I love that, too, you rock).
But let’s get into what you really came here for — today’s recipe for double chocolate muffins.
These double chocolate muffins are a very welcome recipe for a lazy morning. They’re entirely from scratch, but only take a few seconds to mix together, and the flavor is better than anything you can get out of a pre-packaged pouch.
To attain this perfect texture and flavor, we actually are going to use oil instead of butter here.
As with my chocolate cupcake recipe the cocoa powder and chocolate chips (and other ingredients, more on that below) provide more than enough flavor to stand alone. Because butter actually has a certain percentage of water in it, it actually can dry out our muffins where oil keeps them soft and moist, but sometimes is necessary to use anyway to attain a desirable flavor. Here, we have plenty of other elements contributing to the flavor of the muffins, so we can nix the butter and use oil for fluffy, flavorful muffins, no butter required.
We also use sour cream, which (very subtly) adds to the flavor of the muffins, but more importantly also helps to keep them nice and moist.
As you may be able to tell in the above photos, this chocolate muffin batter isn’t super smooth, it’s a little lumpy, and that’s not just because of the excessive amount of chocolate chips that we’ve stirred into the mix!
It’s because the batter has been mixed just enough, which, in the case of these chocolate muffins (and most muffins) means never, ever over-mixing the batter. Doing so usually results in tough, dense, dry muffins that don’t rise above their muffin liners. Since we’re already topping these muffins off with some fairly heavy chocolate chips, we don’t want to do anything to the batter to keep it from rising.
So, yeah, a few dry lumps in the batter are totally OK here.
Look at that 👆🏼
Perfect muffins, every time.
That’s all for today, but if you’re wondering how/if things are going to change around here now that I’m no longer going to be spending 50 hours a week at my day job, they absolutely are (in a good way!), though a lot of it will be behind-the-scenes at first.
Within the next month or so I’ll be bumping up the number of posts that I’m publishing each week, working on a lot more video, and probably dabbling on Facebook Live. Speaking of which, how do you feel about Facebook Live? Do you ever watch them? What recipe would you like to see made first?! If you’re not already, you can follow me on Facebook here.
Thanks again for reading.
Full recipe just below the video.
Double Chocolate Muffins
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup canola oil vegetable oil would also work 120ml
- 1 cup granulated sugar 200g 200g
- 1/2 cup milk 120ml
- 2 large eggs lightly beaten
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2/3 cup sour cream 150g 150g
- 2 cups all-purpose flour 240g 240g
- 1/2 cup cocoa powder 50g 50g
- 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips divided (340g) (I use a mix of mini and regular sized chips)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375F (190C) and line 18 muffin cups with cupcake liners (or lightly grease and flour).
- In large bowl, whisk together oil, sugar, and milk. Stir in eggs and vanilla until well-combined.
- Gently fold in sour cream until just-combined.
- In separate, medium-sized bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.
- Fold flour mixture gently into wet mixture, folding until just barely combined. Stir in 1 1/2 cup chocolate chips.
- Scoop chocolate muffin batter into prepared muffin tin, filling 2/3-3/4 of the way full.
- Sprinkle tops of muffins with remaining chocolate chips.
- Bake on 375F (190C) for 18 minutes (toothpick inserted in center should come out with few slightly fudgy crumbs.
Nutrition
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Sherri Chenoweth says
Very chocolatey, I loved it! Simple and straightforward recipie too!
Sam says
I am so glad you enjoyed them so much, Sherri! 🙂
Ellen says
I wondered about no baking powder(just soda) in the recipe, then read in the comments (only after placing these in the oven 🙄) that there is supposed to be baking powder! If we make this again, how much baking powder?
Sam says
Hi Ellen! There is no need for baking powder in this recipe. I’m not sure where the comments say that but the written recipe is correct. 🙂
Ellen says
Thanks! They turned out great!
Stacey says
These are INSANE. You can ditch your other chocolate muffins / cupcake recipes because these are THAT good.
I’m a mom to a 7 year old who loves chocolate and hates vegetables. So I got sneaky with this one.
I reduce the sugar by 1/2 and the chocolate chips to about 1.25 cups. I do half canola oil and half applesauce, and I add in one full package of pureed spinach to the batter. The spinach is virtually undetectable, and my daughter LOVES them. I buy a 5 oz package of fresh spinach and puree it with the oil / applesauce, and add it all in together.
I’ve never made the recipe as written, but for our family, it is plenty sweet with these modifications.
Sam says
I love how sneaky you got with those veggies! Thanks for sharing your modifications, Stacey, I appreciate it! 🙂
Kira says
I make muffins almost weekly for the Commander of the American Veterans post near my house. He loves dark chocolate, so I used dark chocolate chips and added blueberries (his request). He said they’re the best muffins he has ever tasted! I’m saving your recipe because I’m sure I’ll be making them again.
Kira says
I also raised the temperature to 405 for the first 5 minutes then dropped it back to 375 to get them to rise more! They are probably the tallest and prettiest muffins I’ve made so far.
Sam says
I am so glad everyone enjoys them so much, Kira! 🙂
Erin says
Can I use Dutch-processed cocoa powder for these muffins?
Sam says
Hi Erin! Sometimes I have gotten lucky substituting one for the other, but since the baking soda reacts with the baking powder here you would need to alter things a bit, from my understanding it looks like you would most likely want to try eliminating the baking soda and use 3 teaspoons of baking powder instead. I have not tried it so I am not sure how it would turn out. Good luck! 🙂
Jay says
Can i use yogurt as a substitute ?
Sam says
Hi Jay! You would need plain greek yogurt here. 🙂
Olga says
Hi
Can I use buttermilk instead of sour cream?
Love your website.
– O
Sam says
Hi Olga! It may change the texture and make the muffins a little dry, but I haven’t tested it to be sure.
Walter Barbier says
CHOCOLATE! Came out great, lots of chocolate flavor. Just what I was looking for.
Sam says
I’m so glad you enjoyed it so much, Walter! 🙂
Lauren says
Hello! I just had a quick question. Do you think I could replace the sugar with a 1:1 substitute?
Sugar Spun Run says
Hi, Lauren! I am sorry, but I am not familiar with baking using sugar substitutes so I can not advise. If you try it, I’d love to know how it turns out.
Maria says
Hello Sam, can I place the batter in a jumbo tray of 6 instead? And if so would you kindly let me know how long do they need to bake for and at what temperature? I’m new to baking but I’m learning slowly but surely. I made your lemon poppy seeds muffins today , absolutely awesome, thank you!
Sam says
Hi Maria! You can make them in a jumbo muffin tin. You can follow my guidelines in my bakery style chocolate chip muffins for baking. 🙂
mtngrl84 says
WOW WOW Perfection. I didn’t change a thing altitude 8500ft. Drizzled chocolate ganache over JUMBO muffins YUM
Thank you!
Sam says
I am so glad you enjoyed them so much! Thank you for your feedback on high altitude baking. 🙂