Wake up in decadent style with a Bakery-Style vegan Chocolate Chip Muffins. They are moist, fluffy, and bursting with chocolatey flavor. You’re gonna love them!
Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links.
It’s vegan Chocolate Chip Muffin time.
Hands down, my most popular recipe on the website is my Blueberry Muffins. These muffins have over 180 5 star reviews! You guys LOVE those muffins and that makes me so happy.
Since I didn’t want to stray too far from what works, I adapted that recipe to make these vegan Chocolate Chip Muffins. Using simple everyday ingredients, this fool-proof muffin is unbelievable moist, perfectly sweet, and filled with chocolate chips in every bite.
How to Make Chocolate Chip Muffins {Video}
Recommended Ingredients & Equipment
I love this recipe and I think you will too! These vegan muffins are moist, rich, and bursting with cinnamon and chocolate in every bite. They are the perfect morning pastry or a midday snack.
Ingredients & Substitutions
- Non-Dairy Milk – I recommend soy milk because it curdles the best. Almond milk will often curdle but not as well. This may affect the overall texture of the muffin.
- Apple Cider Vinegar – This is my vinegar of choice when making vegan buttermilk (vinegar + soymilk) but white vinegar, white wine vinegar, and lemon juice are great alternatives.
- All-Purpose Flour – For healthier flour options, you can use 1:1 gluten-free flour blends, buckwheat, or spelt flour.
- Baking Powder & Soda
- Salt
- Granulated Sugar – Check out my guide to vegan sugars and alternative sugar replacements. For a healthier sugar alternative, I recommend coconut sugar.
- Oil – This recipe calls for canola oil because it creates the best texture without added flavor. If you want to avoid hydrogenated oils, try avocado or melted coconut oil. Olive oil also works but adds a slightly savory flavor. If you want to eliminate the oil altogether, swap it out for the same amount of applesauce.
- Vanilla Extract
- Ground Cinnamon
- Mini Chocolate Chips – This is my favorite brand of mini vegan chocolate chips. (<<affiliate link)
Recommended Equipment
For all my muffin recipes, you’ll need basic kitchen equipment such as a mixing bowl, utensils, a wire cooling rack, and a muffin baking pan. I also recommend using an ice cream scoop to evenly and cleanly scoop your batter. (<<affiliate links)
Check out the full list of my recommended kitchen tools and gadgets.
How to Make Vegan Chocolate Chip Muffins
Step One – Make Vegan Buttermilk
In a small bowl combine the soy milk and apple cider vinegar. Whisk together then set aside to allow the milk to curdle.
The soy milk/apple cider vinegar combination makes vegan buttermilk which is essential for the muffins rise. I am often asked if other non-dairy milk will do and have learned that people have had great success with other thick milk such as cashew milk and oat milk.
Once the milk/vinegar mixture is thick and curdled, add the granulated sugar, oil, and vanilla extract, whisking together until the sugar has completely dissolved.
Step Two – Make the Batter
While the milk/vinegar is curdling, mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon in a small bowl. Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until the flour is evenly hydrated. Be careful not to overmix.
Fold in the chocolate chips and your batter is done!
Step Three – Bake the Muffins
Scoop your batter into a greased muffin tin. I find that using an ice cream scoop is the cleanest and easiest way to get the batter into the muffin molds. Additionally, with an ice cream scoop, you can ensure the muffins are equally sized.
Fill each muffin mold about 3/4 of the way full and bake for 20-22 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Remove the muffins from the oven and let them cool in the muffin tin for 10 minutes before flipping out to a wire cooling rack to cool completely.
Serving And Storing
Serve these muffins immediately. They come out of the oven warm, buttery, and hard to resist!
Store leftover muffins in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days. You can also freeze these muffins for up to 2 months. To thaw, pull the muffins from the freezer and let them thaw at room temperature for several hours.
Tips and Tricks
- The most accurate way to measure flour is to spoon it into your measuring cup, leveling it off with the back of a knife.
- Do not overmix your batter. Overmixing allows the gluten to develop and too much gluten will give you gummy and dense muffins.
- Fill muffin tins about 3/4 of the way full. Any fuller than that and they will overflow.
- Make sure to let the muffins sit in the muffin tin for 10 minutes before flipping them out to a wire cooling rack. Otherwise, the muffins may fall apart.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use something other than soymilk?
Yes. While I choose soy milk because it curdles so well, many people have had success with almond milk, oat milk, and cashew milk as well.
Can this batter be made in advance?
Yes! If you want to make this muffin batter in advance, store the batter in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 48 hours. To bake the muffins, preheat the oven and bake according to the instructions. However, these muffins may take a few minutes longer to bake since the batter will be chilled. The muffins will also be slightly denser as the baking soda begins to activate once it’s mixed into the batter, causing it to be slightly less potent.
But don’t worry; the difference will be hardly noticeable.
Can these muffins be gluten-free?
For sure! For gluten-free muffins, I recommend using a 1:1 baking blend.
More Vegan Muffin Recipes
- Blueberry Muffins
- Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins
- Banana Nut Muffins
- Pumpkin Muffins
- Chocolate Zucchini Muffins
Vegan Chocolate Chip Muffins
Ingredients
- 1 cup soy milk
- 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp vegetable oil
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 3/4 cup vegan mini chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375. Spray a muffin tin with cooking spray and set aside.
- In a small bowl combine the soy milk and apple cider vinegar. Whisk together then set aside to allow the milk to curdle. This will take about 5 minutes.
- Meanwhile, in a medium bowl combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.
- Once milk/vinegar mixture is thick and curdled, resembling buttermilk, add the granulated sugar, oil, and vanilla extract, whisking together until the sugar has completely dissolved. Add the wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix together until dough is evenly hydrated. Fold in the chocolate chips.
- Spoon the batter into the prepared baking sheet so that muffin molds are 2/3rd of the way full. Bake for 20-25 minutes until lightly brown and a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean. Remove from oven and let cool in the muffin tin for 5 minutes before transferring onto wire cooling racks to cool completely.
- Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.
Video
Notes
- The most accurate way to measure flour is to spoon it into your measuring cup, leveling it off with the back of a knife.
- Do not overmix your batter. Overmixing allows the gluten to develop and too much gluten will give you gummy and dense muffins.
- Fill muffin tins about 3/4 of the way full. Any fuller than that and they will overflow.
- Make sure to let the muffins sit in the muffin tin for 10 minutes before flipping them out to a wire cooling rack. Otherwise, the muffins may fall apart.
Hi, I’m Sarah. I’m a 14-year (and counting) vegan, professionally trained photographer, former pastry chef, founder of My Darling Vegan, and author of the
Kendra says
I made these as written except I used unsweetened almond milk since that’s all I had on hand, and they were delicious!! Perfect muffin recipe I’ve saved for more batches in the future.
Sarah says
Yay! So glad you liked them.
Sharon says
I these or my grandson! Turned out good, but a little tough. Need to figure out how to get them tender.
I will make them again!
Adele says
So freaking delicious! I’m so happy I found this because, as a non vegan, vegan recipes often require ingredients like coconut oil or flax/chia seeds which I don’t have at home and it’s so bothersome and pricy to buy, but this one I have all the ingredients lying at home already!! Also I substituted apple cider vinegar for lemon juice and it worked wonders!
Sarah says
Yay! I’m so glad you enjoyed them. And I agree, it’s nice to find recipes that you can make with the ingredients you already have at home.
Summer says
Hey ! I was looking forward to your recipe and they are so yummy! I used almond milk and split up the vanilla extract w/ maple syrup (1 tsp vanilla extract & 1 tsp Maple Syrup. They turned out very yummy! Will make again 🙂
Sarah says
Glad you liked them. Thanks for sharing!
Emily leishman says
I have made a few versions of vegan chocolate chip/blueberry/pumpkin/walnut muffins from around the internet and these are by FAR the best ones i have ever tried – that was a great recipe. They are not too sweet, super moist, and just DELICIOUS. Thank you for sharing!
Kerstin Decker says
Sarah, I like to make these muffins can they be made with whole wheat pastry flour?
Sarah says
I wouldn’t do full whole wheat pastry because that might affect the texture too much but I imagine 50/50 with all-purpose would work fine.
Natashia says
Was good and can imagine better but WITHOUT the cinnamon! Ugh! The cinnamon was over dominating, not a big fan – wish I would have known before hand it was going to be so over-whelming. Need to make a new batch now. Should have been mentioned in the notes section.
Kat says
I just wanted to post I also tried this with Flaxmilk and although it doesn’t cuddle with the apple cider vinegar the muffins were DELICIOUS. Non vegan people at work had no idea! Trying with gluten free flour next and hoping for great results again.
Sarah says
That’s great! Thanks for sharing that.
Erica says
These muffins were awesome! I used coconut oil instead of vegetable oil, homemade almond milk, added some walnuts, and sprinkled turbinado sugar on top of the muffins right before putting them in the oven. They came out really good. Very moist, and hard to resist. I had my mother in law try some and she went on and on for like 20 or so minutes talking about how amazingly good they were and how she’s never tasted muffins so delicious in her life and we should go into business together and open up a bakery. I just laughed and showed her the recipe. She couldn’t believe it was vegan. Anyway, thank you so much for sharing. Your recipes are so delicious and you’re so awesome.
Stacey Ferguson says
I used unsweetened almond milk and these turned out amazing!! Can you substitute whole wheat flour?
Sarah says
That will change the texture and taste. I would start by trying half and half and see how that goes!
Summer says
I tried this recipe with half whole wheat pastry flour and half unbleached all purpose flour and they turned out perfect!
Kristin says
yum! looks so easy and delicious – plus i already have all the ingredients on hand!
May says
These waere great, my family loved them and wwe will be making these AMAZING muffins again!
Hartley says
These were were amazing! We will be making these again!
Melissa says
These were great! I used almond milk and they turned out just fine! My very picky 5 year old asked for another after she gobbled up the first! A hit in this house! Thank you!
Sarah says
Yay! Glad to hear.
Allie says
Would almond milk work for this recipe? Thanks!
Sarah says
It won’t curdle as well, which helps helps give the muffins their tenderness but it will still work.
Sean Mahan says
Vegan muffins? Oh, I’m definitely going to try this! I bet they’re super delicious. Thanks for sharing the details