30-Minute Vegan Chocolate Muffins
by Olivia Biermann
on Oct 25, 2021 (updated May 26, 2025)
If you’re craving moist, fluffy vegan muffins with rich chocolate flavour, you’re in the right place. These easy, eggless chocolate muffins use simple pantry staples like plant-based milk and cocoa powder to create bakery-style treats that are perfect for breakfast, snacks, or even dessert. Whether you’re new to plant-based baking or a seasoned pro, they’re easy to make with less than 10 simple ingredients and in only 30 minutes. No fancy equipment or complicated steps required!
Why you’ll love my tried and true chocolate muffin recipe
- Bakery quality made at home – These muffins rival any muffin you’d find in a bakery. Like my bakery-inspired carrot cake muffins and vegan blueberry muffins, they have big and fluffy rounded tops and a moist crumb you’ll crave. Plus, I packed them with a ton of vegan chocolate chips!
- Easy to make with 9 ingredients – All you need are 9 vegan baking staples to make this easy yet impressive recipe.
The secret to bakery-style muffins: Start them at a high temperature for 5 minutes before lowering the temperature for the rest of the bake time. This way, the batter quickly rises and forms those large, bakery-worthy rounded tops
How I dodge dry, dense or gummy muffins without eggs
One of the biggest challenges I’ve noticed aspiring bakers face with vegan muffins is avoiding that dreaded dry, or dense and gummy texture. As I’ve learned the hard way, without eggs to bind and lift the batter it’s easy for muffins to turn out heavy or rubbery if the ingredients aren’t balanced just right. Through the many, many vegan muffin recipes I’ve made over the years, I’ve learned the key is to strike a perfect harmony between moisture, fat, and leavening.
These chocolate muffins use tried-and-tested ingredients (plant-based milk, a little oil, and baking powder) that keeps the crumb light and tender. Also, be gentle when mixing! Overworking the batter can develop too much gluten, which leads to chewiness instead of fluffiness.
Why muffins are one of my favourite recipes to bake
In my opinion, vegan muffins are one of those magical baked goods that come together quickly, taste amazing, and serve as a snack, dessert or breakfast with no questions asked. These dairy-free and eggless chocolate muffins are easy to whip up in one bowl, endlessly customizable (hello, chocolate chips, fruit, and cozy spices). They’re a great option for sharing with everyone, whether you’re baking kid-friendly snacks for the freezer, or cooking for a crowd.
Bake a fresh batch of these muffins and serve them with fresh fruit, vegan omelettes, and hash browns. Craving an indulgent savoury and sweet meal? Pair your muffins with a breakfast double down sandwich or a batch of pesto tofu scramble.
I’m a chocolate girl at heart, but my love for all kids of muffins runs deep! On any given weekend in the fall you’ll find me cozied up in the kitchen watching You’ve Got Mail and baking pumpkin spice muffins with crunchy oat streusel or cinnamon swirl coffee cake muffins.
30-Minute Vegan Chocolate Muffins
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 20 minutes
- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 12 muffins
Description
Rich chocolate muffin batter with chocolate chips without dairy or eggs; a bakery-quality muffin made in your very own kitchen in 30 minutes.
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/3 cup cocoa powder
- 2 tsp baking powder
- pinch of salt
- 1 1/4 cups nondairy milk
- 1 cup sugar (plus extra for sprinkling on top, if desired)
- 1/3 cup oil or melted vegan butter
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup dairy-free chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425 F. Prepare a 12-cup muffin tin paper muffin liners, or grease well so they don’t stick.
- In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt until combined.
- In a separate mixing bowl, combine the nondairy milk, sugar, oil and vanilla extract and stir until sugar is dissolved. Pour into dry mixture and stir to combine. A few small lumps in the batter are okay.
- Fold in the chocolate chips.
- Divide all of the batter evenly between the 12 muffin cups (it is approx 1/3-1/2 cup of batter per muffin).
- Bake in preheated oven for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, without opening the oven, reduce the temperature to 375 F and bake another 14 minutes, until golden brown on top and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean or with a few crumbs clinging to it.
- Remove from the oven and let cool in the muffin tin a few minutes, before removing and transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
Notes
Once they’re fully cooled, transfer the muffins to an airtight container or ziplock bag. They’ll keep for up to 4 days at room temperature, up to 7 days in the fridge, or up to 3 months in the freezer.
Let the frozen muffins thaw in the fridge overnight before serving. Either enjoy them at room temperature or quickly reheat them in a toaster oven. This will make them super gooey again!
These are great. I just tried adding a tiny bit of instant coffee to enhance the chocolate and I sprinkle a bit if sugar on top. My picky 6 year old loves these in his lunch box.
Thank you for this recipe! My kiddo is allergic to eggs so I’m trying my best to find vegan baked goods substitutes. These muffins are so amazing! They’ve become the whole family’s favorite!! They are so decadent we eat them for dessert too! Thank you again!!
I am so happy your whole family enjoys them! Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment :)!
My kids are not vegan and these are their all time favourite muffins. My husbands also!
wow what a compliment!! Thanks so much
I was craving chocolate muffins, but I didn’t have any sour cream and I came upon this recipe and I was pleasantly pleased how simple the ingredients were. It was easy to put together and I did add 1 tsp of instant coffee into the warm almond milk to bust the chocolate flavor. This recipe is definitely a keeper.
im so glad you loved it! It truly is one of my all time favourite muffin recipes!
Hi Liz! Love this recipe, i’m about to try it!! Yours are always my go-to!
Just one question, do you use your oven on ventilate or static mode? thanks so much
Just regular! no fan 🙂
Hi Liv – I am really looking forward to making this recipe today but your measurements don’t make sense. I have seen a few other commenters with the same issue from last year but it looks like it was never resolved. The recipe measurements that first appear for a single serving change when you click on 2x, then back to 1x, so they start as 1.5 servings of flour then go to 2x, then when doubled say 4. Very unclear what to do so I am hesitant to make this. Can you confirm the right measurements? Thanks
Hi!! That scale feature is a default on the recipe card program I use and I can’t control what info it chooses unfortunately. I am looking to find a better program that wouldn’t have this issue but just stick to the measurements written in the actual recipe 🙂
I turned off the function for now so it doesn’t get confusing!
These are a dream for every chocolate lover!
agree!!!
These muffins were amazing. They were fluffy and chocolatey. Will make these more often.
Sooo good! I will definitely make again! Check out my insta for pics I posted of the muffins and snickerdoodles 🙂
Amazing recipe! My husband and I love buying the jumbo muffins from Costco and freezing them and we take one out and share half each (we try to portion control or else I can eat the whole try haha) and when I made these we both thought this is replacing the store bought ones immediately! AND they are a perfect size.
A question – I was scaling it to make a double batch and noticed when I click on “2x” it only changes the flour to 2 cups (instead of 3 cups) and when I switched it back to “1x” it shows 2 cups (instead of 1 1/2 cups). Did you use 2 cups of flour in a single batch or 1 1/2 cups ? Just want to make sure I’m following the correct measurements.
Do you suggest I use 3 cups for a double batch?
Hmm I think that might be a glitch with the recipe card. Definitely just double the quantities yourself if it seems wrong, so it would be 3 cups not 2! I will look into that issue 🙂
These are sooo good! And it’s super easy too. I used oil and chocolate chunks instead of chips and it turned out great.
These were amazing. I made them for my daughter-in-law’s birthday. I made some coconut whipped cream to go along side but warmed up in the microwave for about 15 seconds with vegan ice cream is also a plus. My husband also added a shot of Almond Milk Bailey’s for the grown ups. 🙂
delicious!!!
So good!! I was skeptical about how fluffy they were going to be but wow I was proved wrong. They were so fluffy and chocolately and just perfect. Reminded me of a fluffy brownie. I needed this after a long Monday. I added about 1/4 cup less of the called for sugar and they were still sweet enough! My only thing is my chocolate chips sunk to the bottom because the batter is quite runny.