These double chocolate muffins have been our favorite chocolate muffin recipe for over a decade. I love them so much that I published the easy recipe in my 1st cookbook back in 2014! (We now add even more chocolate chips and a touch of vanilla for extra flavor, as you’ll see in the recipe below.) The muffins are incredibly rich, mega chocolate-y, and loaded with chocolate chips in every single bite. Sour cream helps guarantee a soft and moist muffin that has a denser texture than chocolate cupcakes.
Not pointing fingers or anything but chocolate sweet rolls, you’re kind of high maintenance for the morning. (Worth the hype and effort for sure though.) Here’s something easier that satisfies your chocolate craving and doesn’t require a ton of effort, time, or patience. Ha!
One reader, Teck, commented: “It’s truly a superb recipe. Moist and full of flavor. Easy to follow. Voted the best muffin by my family. ★★★★★”
Another reader, Paulina, commented: “They turned out just perfect and looked so good, you’d think I bought them. This will definitely be my go-to chocolate muffin recipe from now on! ★★★★★”
Double Chocolate Muffins Details
- Flavor: Chocolate. Seriously, that’s all you really need to know! This chocolate muffin recipe comes together with cocoa powder and chocolate chips. In recent years, I began adding vanilla extract to the batter for a touch of extra flavor. You can certainly leave it out if you’d like (and as mentioned above, the cookbook recipe doesn’t include it).
- Texture: Unlike chocolate cupcakes and chocolate cake, these muffins don’t really have a sponge-like texture. And that’s mostly because we aren’t adding hot water to the batter. They’re more like a bakery-style muffin with a tighter crumb and satisfying bite.
- Ease: Besides the deep chocolate flavor, what you’ll love most about this double chocolate chip muffin recipe is its ease. The recipe uses common baking ingredients, doesn’t require a mixer, and is super straightforward like this pumpkin muffins recipe—2 cups of this, 1 cup of that, and whole eggs. (No separating needed.)
Key Ingredients in Double Chocolate Muffins
The full written recipe is below, but let’s walk through some key ingredients so you understand their importance. This is always helpful when looking for substitution options.
- Cocoa Powder: Use unsweetened natural cocoa powder. You could get away use dutch process cocoa powder, but the muffins may not rise as much. For best taste and texture, stick with natural. Most of the flavor comes from the cocoa powder, so choose a good one! I’ve baked with many over the years and I always go back to Hershey’s.
- Sour Cream: If you were to skip the sour cream and replace it with milk, the chocolate muffins would be thin, flat, and wet. Just like it does in chocolate covered strawberry muffins, sour cream lifts the crumb and keeps the muffins moist. You can replace it with plain yogurt and I often do—in fact, that’s how the recipe is written in the book!
- Oil: We usually use creamed butter and sugar in muffin recipes like blueberry muffins. However, cocoa powder is a very drying ingredient so it’s best paired with oil to keep the muffins moist. If you replace it with melted butter, the muffins will dry out. You won’t miss the flavor of butter because chocolate overpowers it.
By the way, if you enjoy banana + chocolate together, you’ll love these chocolate banana muffins—they’re whole wheat, too!
Expect a thick and sticky batter.
Avoid Overmixing & Use Room Temperature Ingredients
Really all you’re doing here is whisking the dry ingredients together in one bowl and the wet ingredients together in another bowl. The dry ingredients include the sugar and chocolate chips. This way you’re only mixing the ingredients together once—dry + wet instead of dry + wet + mixing in the chocolate chips. Make sense?
- The reason why you’ll mix the chocolate chips into the dry ingredients is to avoid over-mixing the final batter. Over-mixing muffin batter can lead to a tough, dense baked good. While these chocolate muffins are certainly denser than our soft and spongy chocolate cupcakes, they aren’t heavy as bricks.
- What will also help you avoid overmixing is using room temperature ingredients. Bring the eggs, milk, and sour cream to room temperature before starting. As a shortcut, place the eggs in a glass of warm water for 10 minutes and—honestly this is what I do—microwave the sour cream and milk for 10-15 seconds to take the chill off.
Tip: You won’t regret eating one warm out of the oven. Those melty chips!
Double Chocolate Muffins Recipe Video
Double Chocolate Chip Muffins
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 21 minutes
- Total Time: 40 minutes (includes slight cooling)
- Yield: 12-14 muffins
- Category: Breakfast
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
These double chocolate muffins are incredibly rich, mega chocolate-y, and loaded with chocolate chips in every single bite. Sour cream helps guarantee a soft and moist muffin that has a denser texture than chocolate cupcakes.
Ingredients
- 2 cups (250g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
- 1 cup (200g) granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup (41g) unsweetened natural cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 and 3/4 cups (315g) semi-sweet chocolate chips
- 2 large eggs, at room temperature
- 3/4 cup (185g) full fat sour cream or plain yogurt, at room temperature
- 1/2 cup (120ml) vegetable oil*
- 1/2 cup (120ml) whole milk, at room temperature
- 1 and 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425°F (218°C). Spray a 12-count muffin pan with nonstick spray or use cupcake liners. This recipe yields about 14 muffins, so prepare a second muffin pan in the same manner or bake in batches and reserve leftover batter at room temperature for when the first batch is done.
- Whisk the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt, and chocolate chips together in a large bowl. Set aside.
- Whisk the eggs, sour cream, oil, milk, and vanilla extract together until combined. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients and fold together with a silicone spatula or wooden spoon until completely combined. (Batter is quite thick, so I recommend a spatula or spoon over a whisk.) Avoid overmixing. The batter will be thick and sticky.
- Spoon the batter into liners, filling them all the way to the top. Bake for 5 minutes at 425°F then, keeping the muffins in the oven, reduce the oven temperature to 350°F (177°C). Bake for an additional 15-16 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. The total time these muffins take in the oven is about 20-21 minutes, give or take. (For mini muffins, bake 13-14 total minutes at 350°F (177°C) the whole time.)
- Cool muffins for 10 minutes in the pan, then transfer to a wire rack until ready to eat.
- Cover leftover muffins and store at room temperature for 5 days or in the refrigerator for 1 week.
Notes
- Freezing Instructions: For longer storage, freeze the muffins for up to 3 months. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator, then heat up in the microwave if desired.
- Special Tools (affiliate links): 12-count Muffin Pan | Cupcake Liners | Glass Mixing Bowls | Whisk | Wooden Spoon or Silicone Spatula | Cooling Rack
- Jumbo Muffins: If you’d like to make about 6 jumbo muffins instead of standard size, follow the recipe through step 3 using a greased jumbo 6-count muffin pan. Spoon batter into the liners, filling all the way to the top. Bake for 5 minutes at 425°F then, keeping the muffins in the oven, reduce the oven temperature to 350°F (177°C). Bake for an additional 25-28 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
- Sour Cream: Use full fat sour cream. In a pinch, you can replace it with plain yogurt. (Full fat Greek style or regular yogurt would be best.)
- Oil: For best taste and texture, use vegetable oil. In a pinch, you can replace with canola oil or olive oil. The muffins can taste greasy with melted coconut oil, but if you try it, it’s imperative the other ingredients are room temperature so the coconut oil doesn’t solidify as you mix the batter together.
- Milk: Whole milk is best. 2%, 1%, or nondairy milk work in a pinch. Do not use nonfat milk. Don’t use buttermilk. (You could use buttermilk if replacing both the sour cream AND milk, but the muffins taste a little spongy that way. Best to use sour cream and whole milk.)
- Recipe excerpted from Sally’s Baking Addiction. This version includes more chocolate chips and the addition of vanilla extract for a little extra flavor. The cookbook version also uses plain yogurt, but you can use sour cream as noted here.
Reader Comments and Reviews
These are delicious! Super easy to make. My kids go crazy for them! If you are a chocolate lover. You will very much enjoy these. Thank you, Sally!
I loved this recipe very much! I tried the version with yogurt and the other with sour cream and both came excellent. The only thing I would say is that it needs 2.5 cups sugar instead of 1, because the cacao can be quite strong, plus with the absence of butter which usually amplifies sweetness, it comes out bland. I highly encourage increasing sugar content and/or adding butter! Thank you again for this wonderful recipe!
Insane! Like a cupcake brownie! Will definetly be saving this one for future. I used white choc & milk choc chips as it’s all I had on hand, but will try dark choc next time. Love all your recipes!!
Everytime I use your recipes, my baked goods come out wonderful. Thank you for sharing your recipes.
I make these so often I have memorized the recipe. I use 1:1 gluten free flour substitute and a full two cups of chocolate chips. we like them with white chocolate chips too. yum!
Hey thank you for the recipe. I tried it, to a T and found that the muffins were a tad dry after cooling and not that tasty. It had this empty taste that I’ve experienced whenever I make baked goods with vegetable oil instead of butter, which comes with the fatty, creamy flavour. Is there any way to include butter for the ‘baked goods’ aroma and flavour, and maybe incorporating baking chocolate into the recipe if cocoa powder dries it out too much? Thank you!
Hi Olivia, thanks so much for giving these muffins a try. We find it’s best to stick to oil for this particular recipe. Butter will usually yield dry-tasting muffins when using cocoa powder, which is a very drying ingredient. You might enjoy these triple chocolate muffins instead, which uses both melted chocolate and butter. Let us know if you give them a try!
I made this for Valentine’s Day and everyone loved it, but I thought there was too many oil so I decided to make this with 90ml of oil instead of 120ml. It turned out perfect and I enjoyed eating the rest of the muffins.
I have these in oven now. Always a hit! Buttermilk works for me in this recipe. I also add a touch of good cinnamon to the mix. Muffins are my go to, and have tried so many of Sally’s muffins and cookies. All so good.
OMG Sally, the muffins turned out great! Moist and yummy! The sweetness is just right. Though I wasn’t able to make it into a dome shape, they still look great! Thank you for sharing this recipe!
Just want to let you know I love your recipes and they have really helped me to grow my baking skills. Thank you!
Hello, I have made this muffins lots of times some time ago, they were perfect , I forgot about them then and only recently made 2 batches , they were still moist and delicious but didn’t raise as before, is 1 teaspoon of soda really enough? Were they any updates on this recipe? Thanks for ur help, best justyna
Hi Justyna, what kind of cocoa powder did you use? Was it natural or Dutch-processed? Using Dutched would affect the baking soda’s effectiveness, so could be the cause here, if that is what you used.
They’re delicious! I want to add maraschino cherries and a little juice to it. Do you have suggestions on how I can tweak it?
Hi Rose, we haven’t tried that, but you could try substituting some of the milk for cherry juice from the jar, and mixing in some chopped maraschino cherries along with the chocolate chips. Let us know how they turn out!
Hi Sally, I have just finished baking my second batch of chocolate muffins. The first time, they were slightly dry and had a dome shape that did not look great. The second batch, which I have just completed, still has the dome, even though I used a little less filling in each muffin cup, and reduced the cook time by 1 minute. Have not tried them for dryness yet; they are still warm. My lemon blueberry muffins do not dome.
Any suggestions!
Hi Linda, the initial burst of high heat helps give these muffins the bakery-style domed top. Overbaking can dry out muffins, so hopefully this most recent batch with the slightly reduced bake time will be just right for you!
Love this recipe! Can do it without the chocolate chips?
Sure!
I made bese in a muffin pan as instructed and only got 6 muffins. Are you sure you’re not using regular cupcake pans? Those are way smaller and would totally yield 12 total. Delicious regardless!!
These are the best double chocolate chip muffins you will ever taste! The only thing I would say is they are quite sweet, so more of a snack rather then breakfast. I love all of Sally’s muffins but these are one of her best!
So yummy!! Only issue is that after storing in a plastic container for 3 days, iv’e found that they’ve now gone dry?? is there anything I could do in future to prevent that? still so yummy even when a teensy bit dry.
Hi Elly, we’re so glad you enjoyed the muffins! They will start to lose some freshness over time, but you can try decreasing your bake time by just a minute or so next time to help prevent over baking, which can dry out the muffins. Be sure to also spoon and level (or use a kitchen scale) to measure your flour so that it is not over measured, which can also dry out baked goods. Hope this helps for your next batch!
could lower the sugar as its really sweeet
I just made these using dark chocolate chips and added cinnamon, plus a streusel topping with butter/flour/salt/cocoa powder/cinnamon. SO good — thank you! Next time (there will be a next time!) I’ll add sparkling sugar to the tops, or maybe a little bit of chile powder.
So moist and absolutely delicious. Easy to make !
Great recipe
I brought these to work at my hospital and the staff descended on them like seagulls! So many compliments on how moist and delicious they were. I used mini chips on top and regular chips inside, got a lot of good feedback on different textures. They are excited for next batch! Thanks for sharing this amazing and easy recipe 🙂