Bakery Style Vegan Chocolate Chip Muffins

Each of these bakery-style muffins is bejeweled with dark chocolate chunks and boasts a melt-in-your-mouth, fluffy interior. A sprinkling of coarse sugar on top is the perfect finishing touch, giving every bite the perfect amount of crunch in contrast to the soft and tender crumb. This recipe makes enough grown-up, gourmet muffins for breakfast, brunch parties, and weekly snacks.

Why this recipe works

Light, fluffy, and soft

There’s nothing worse than picking up a chocolate chip muffin from your favorite coffee or donut place only for it to be dry and dense. Ain’t nobody got time for that! Which is why this chocolate chip muffin recipe produces light, fluffy, and pillowy soft muffins, the kind of muffins you dream of. Their heavenly texture is all thanks to a muffin batter made with vegan sour cream. The fat and acid in sour cream provide the muffins with moisture, richness, and just the right amount of tang. The result? A rich and tender muffin with a melt-in-your-mouth crumb! To add some contrast to the ultra-soft bites, we finished them with coarse sugar on top. It lends the perfect crunchy topping in contrast to the soft interior.

Bakery-style big girl muffins

We call these big girl muffins in the RPL kitchen because they have the perfect amount of sweetness. Anyone with or without a sweet tooth will enjoy them. If your sweet tooth is stronger than others, use the options we’ve included in the Tips and Ingredient Notes sections to make them sweeter. Cinnamon and nutmeg bring even more flavor to the mix. They give the muffins a warm and comforting flavor while highlighting the richness of the chocolate. Lastly, swapping regular chocolate chips for chopped dark chocolate brings a level of sophistication that elevates the muffins to a whole new level (though of course you can use chocolate chips if you prefer).

Easy to make

Whether you’re a novice or an experienced baker, this recipe is just plain easy to make. Most, if not all, of the vegan pantry staple ingredients might already be in your kitchen and the batter is a breeze to put together. Let them do their thing in the oven and in less than 30 minutes, you’ll have big, bountiful muffins that your friends will think you picked up from a fancy bakery!

Ingredient notes

Oat milk

This adds a neutral base for the liquid ingredients, which means it won’t add any overpowering flavors or textures. We recommend using a creamy full-fat oat milk for the best texture, like Califia and Oatly brands. Substitute: Oat milk is the best option here because other plant-based milks, such as soy milk, may add more protein to the batter. More protein = different textures in the batter. That said, you don’t need that much milk, so the change likely won’t make a big difference.

Vegan sour cream

For the best vegan chocolate chip muffins with the most luxurious texture, enter vegan sour cream. Vegan sour cream is a rich yet slightly acidic ingredient that adds moisture and richness to the batter without making the muffins dense. It also adds a subtle tangy flavor that balances out the sweetness. How does it work? As the food science blog, Food Crumbles, explains, sour cream is a pro at adding epic levels of moisture to baked goods because it’s thick and fatty. And despite this richness, it still doesn’t weigh down batters. This is because the acidity in sour cream reacts with the baking soda, which creates gas bubbles in the batter, leaving you with light and fluffy baked goods. I also use vegan sour cream to make my epic Vegan Pancakes and fluffy Vegan Lemon Cake. If you love the fabulous texture of these muffins, then you’ll want to give these recipes a try as well! Tips for buying: Tofutti, Kite Hill, and Follow Your Heart are our favorite vegan sour cream brands and all work great here. Substitute: If you don’t have access to vegan sour cream, you can try using a thick vegan Greek yogurt instead (we love the brands Culina or CocoJune). Consider adding an extra tablespoon of sugar, as yogurt is more tart than sour cream.

All-purpose flour

This will give the muffins the best structure and a tender crumb.

Flaxseed meal

When you mix ground flaxseed meal and water together, they take on the same consistency as eggs. This mixture (called flax eggs) is the best egg replacer in this recipe because it binds the batter together and adds some extra fiber, antioxidants, and omega-3 fatty acids.

Dark chocolate

This is a bakery-style muffin recipe, which is why we used chopped dark chocolate instead of semisweet chocolate chips. Dark chocolate is sweet yet subtly bitter in the best way, and gives these muffins a rich depth of flavor without being cloyingly sweet. Plus, the finely chopped pieces ensure that you get a bit of chocolate in every bite. Substitute: You can make sweeter muffins by substituting vegan-friendly chocolate chips for dark chocolate. In our tests, both regular-sized and mini chocolate chips work, but mini chips disperse more evenly in the batter (affiliate link).

Cinnamon and nutmeg

These warm spices give the muffins a sophisticated flair. They also complement and enhance the chocolate beautifully without overpowering the rest of the muffin.

Step-by-step instructions

In a small bowl, make the flax eggs by whisking the flaxseed meal with the warm water. Set aside to thicken. Next, add 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar to the milk and stir gently. This is how you make vegan buttermilk. Set it aside to curdle. Chop the dark chocolate. Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a medium bowl. In a separate large bowl, whisk together the flax eggs, melted butter, and sugar together. To finish, add in the sour cream, buttermilk, and vanilla extract and whisk well to combine. Gently fold the dry ingredients into the wet. Stir until the two are JUST combined – do not overmix! The batter will be quite thick and not runny. Finish by folding the dark chocolate into the batter. Fill the prepared muffin tins to the top with the batter. Sprinkle some coarse sugar on top of each muffin before pressing the reserved chocolate onto the tops. Bake in the oven at 425ºF/218ºC oven for 6 minutes, then lower the temp to 350ºF/175ºC and bake for another 16 to 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Note: Baking the muffins at a high temperature before lowering it is known as the two-temperature system. It gives you beautifully risen, crisp-on-the-outside and soft-on-the-inside, and tall, bountiful muffins every time. Learn more about this method and how it benefits your baked goods in this guide by The Kitchn. When they’re done, transfer the big, chocolatey muffins to a cooling rack to cool for a few minutes. Enjoy them right away or store/freeze them for later!

Tips for making this recipe

Use room temperature ingredients

If you want to avoid broken muffin batter, bring your vegan sour cream and milk down to room temperature first. To do so, measure out the milk and sour cream, then leave them on the kitchen counter for 20 to 30 minutes. This takes time but it’s SUPER important. Room temperature dairy substitutions will, as Sally’s Baking Addiction puts it, “bond together easily.” The ingredients will be incorporated perfectly, the batter will be smooth and free of any cold sour cream chunks, and, most importantly, the muffins will taste their best.

Don’t overmix the batter

Use a spatula to gently fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until just combined, then stop. Stirring too many times and overworking the batter will knock out the air and give you tough, dense muffins.

Lined vs. greased muffin tins

We’ve had great success baking our Vegan Banana Muffins and Blueberry Muffins in a naked muffin tin that had been greased with nonstick spray or cooking oil (rubbed with a paper towel). Muffin liners are convenient but leave a ridged texture behind. Plus, if you leave the muffins in the lined muffin tin too long, they can become soggy. We prefer to use unlined tins but you need to make sure you generously grease them (otherwise, the muffins will stick).

Wait for the caramelization!

You might think that a fresh from the oven, pillowy soft muffin with gooey melted chocolate in every bite is the best it’s gonna get. Wrong! After they cool completely, the coarse sugar topping caramelizes, the chocolate hardens, and the muffin is sturdier. I’m not going to tell you not to enjoy a warm muffin, but you definitely don’t want to miss out on the room temperature muffin (trust me, it’s sexier than it sounds!).

Tailor to your preferred sweetness

These are grown-up muffins that don’t taste overly sweet. So if you’re craving a sweeter muffin, use a mixture of dark chocolate and semisweet chocolate, or a dark chocolate in the 60% range. For extra sweet muffins, use semisweet chocolate chips (ensure they are vegan-friendly). (1) If you opt for semisweet chocolate, use just 1 tablespoon of coarse sugar on top to avoid a too-sweet muffin. (2) When using dark chocolate, don’t chop it too finely (the larger pieces create nice big melty pools of chocolate). If you love this Vegan Chocolate Chip Muffins recipe, please rate and review it below! Your support is always much appreciated :) Recipe: Nisha Vora / Rainbow Plant Life | Photography: Megan Morello