Chocolate Muffins
Rich, indulgent chocolate muffins studded with dark chocolate chips and a gorgeous crunchy muffin top. Takes 10 minutes to make, 1 hour to rest, and 15 minutes to bake!
I’ve had it on my mind to make chocolate muffins for a while now. The only reason I didn’t, is because I kept thinking on how I could make these muffins more unique/different/special…but then I realized chocolate is special and muffins are special so here we are lol.
What makes these chocolate muffins so good?!
- They’re large and shareable (if you want lol)
- Large crispy muffin top, because that’s the best part, ofc.
- They’re sooo fluffy but also rich and indulgent like chocolate should be.
- Packed full of your favorite chocolate chips – dark chocolate, milk chocolate, mini chocolate chips or even white chocolate chips.
- Stay moist, fluffy/bouncy for days.
If you love a fluffy muffin with large muffin tops, make sure to check out all my muffin recipes. I have sooo many and they all stem from my favorite vanilla muffins. I have my famous blueberry muffins, strawberry crunch muffins, nutella muffins, banana bread muffins, pumpkin muffins, etc.
If you’re here for all things chocolate, may I recommend my favorite brown butter brownies, double chocolate chip cookies, ferrero rocher cookies and chocolate ganache cake.
Ingredients
- Flour: I use all purpose flour in most of my recipes and I HIGHLY recommend using a digital scale, as flour is so often over measured.
- Baking Powder & Baking Soda: We’re going to need both here and a lot of them to get that gorgeous muffin top.
- Cocoa Powder: I love using dutch-processed cocoa powder but any unsweetened cocoa powder works fine.
- Sugar: sugar contributes to texture as much as to flavor so I don’t recommend cutting the sugar. I used granulated sugar and personally don’t prefer the flavor or texture if swapped with brown sugar (or any other sugar).
- Butter: I like to use salted butter but unsalted also works, just add an extra 1/4 tsp of salt.
- Eggs: I use room temperature, large eggs. Place them in hot water for a few minutes if they’re cold.
- Greek Yogurt/Milk/Cream: I found my favorite combination to be half greek yogurt and half heavy whipping cream. I know it’s weird, most people don’t use cream in muffins but I promise it’s so good.
- If you don’t want to use cream and you want to use milk, I would sub the greek yogurt for sour cream or at least use a full-fat yogurt. The higher fat content helps keep these muffins more tender and moist. That said, you can also do greek yogurt and milk for a slightly healthier option. They’ll be good, especially right away but they might dry out a little quicker.
- Vanilla: I added a little vanilla extract to the muffins. Any kind works, I wouldn’t waste the most expensive ones on these though cuz the chocolate is the dominant flavor here.
- Chocolate: I used a mix of dark chocolate chips and mini chocolate chips. You can use any type of chocolate you like, even a chopped chocolate bar will work fine.
Step-by-Step Instructions
- Whisk together the melted butter and sugar: let the butter cool a little before combining with the sugar.
- Whisk in the eggs: this is important; whisk in one egg at a time for about 30 seconds, until it’s completely combined, pale and fluffy. Then add another egg, etc.
- Add the dairy: whisk in the greek yogurt and vanilla until it’s smooth, then add the room temperature cream and whisk until it’s smooth.
- Add the dry ingredients together: whisk in the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt into the wet ingredients until they’re completely combined (I recommend sifting if your cocoa powder is clumpy).
- Add the chocolate chips and then fold them in just until they’re evenly distributed.
- Rest the batter: another important step – cover the bowl and let the batter rest at room temperature for 1-2 hours. This allows the gluten to relax and the leaveners to get a head start. Don’t rest any longer though.
- Fill the muffin pan all the way to the top rim and top with ½-1 tsp of granulated sugar to make a crunchy muffin top and a few chocolate chips.
- Bake: for five minutes at 425 F (218 C) and then reduce oven temperature to 375 F (191 C) and bake for another 10ish minutes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Absolutely! You could use any type of chocolate chips or chopped up chocolate bar in the batter. You could rub in a little orange zest to the sugar for a little chocolate orange action.
You could also add 1/2-1 cup of chopped nuts or a swirl of peanut butter or Nutella through the middle and the top.
Yes, dairy free butter, milk/cream, sour cream/yogurt will work fine for this recipe!
I haven’t tested these specifically but all my cake recipes work well with gluten-free 1:1 substitutes like Bob’s Red Mill and King Arthur Flour. This recipe is pretty similar to my cake recipes so it should work fine!
How to store chocolate muffins
I LOVE crispy muffin tops but if you store these in an airtight container, you lose that crispiness. So I leave them out overnight and then after the first night, I store them in an airtight container or bag at room temperature so they don’t dry out.
I don’t recommend refrigerating, as they’ll just dry out. You can freeze them and bring them back to room temperature before serving but again, you’ll lose that crisp muffin top.
How to freeze muffins
Bakes stay more fresh when they’re frozen. Place muffins in an airtight container and then place the container in a freezer bag.
Or wrap each one in plastic wrap and then place them all in a freezer bag.
Freeze for up to a couple of months. Bring back to room temperature before serving.
Thanks so much for reading today’s post, if you have any questions just comment down below. If you make these, I would absolutely love a star rating or review 🙂
As always, have a blessed day and happy baking!
Love, B
only have unsalted butter
can I use it and add salt?
These are good! They definitely have good flavor and are easy to make. I used 5% Greek yogurt and followed all other instructions to the T! Thanks for the delicious recipe!
Disappointed. Followed the recipe to the T and we found it to be dry and tasteless. Ingredients were at room temperature. I let the batter rest for an hour. Not sure why they came out the way they did.
Hi Cindy, I’m sorry you were disappointed.
Did you measure your ingredients with a scale?