Fluffy healthy chocolate muffins that are oil-free and egg-free, made moist and rich using sweet potato puree. Nutritious dairy free muffins perfect for breakfast, and made with pantry ingredients to whip up fast and easy.
Healthy Chocolate Muffins
Healthy chocolate muffins are perfect for breakfast because they are rich in nutrients, including protein and fiber and energizing magnesium. Plus they are muffins and everyone knows muffins are suitable for breakfast. So, let's have chocolate for breakfast, shall we?
How Do You Make Healthy Chocolate Muffins Healthier?
Healthy chocolate muffins are easy to make healthier by swapping eggs and oil for a veggie puree. I have been using this trick a lot lately and it has been super successful especially in my donut recipes. A veggie puree, such as sweet potato, pumpkin or butternut squash, helps the donuts rise and stay moist. The best part is that veggie purees are full of nutrients not typically found in baked goods..
I recommend using canned veggie purees for this recipe, such as pumpkin puree, sweet potato puree or butternut squash puree because freshly cooked purees will take too much mixing of the batter to smooth out. And too much mixing leads to rubbery muffins. We don't want that.
So...as you can guess this veggie puree trick is useful in many recipes, not just chocolate, but I wanted to create a chocolate muffin recipe, so here we are!
Oh, and before we dive into the recipe, I'd like to invite you to sign up for my free chocolate course. Five lessons hit your inbox with detail on how to create your own simple healthy chocolate desserts.
Okay, so back to this recipe...
Ingredients Needed To Make Healthy Chocolate Muffins
Flour. Although I start my ingredient list with flour, these muffins can still be flour-free if you use a non-flour such as oat flour. You can buy it on Amazon, or find it for a better price at your grocery store, especially Whole Foods online. But feel free to use all purpose or even a gluten-free all purpose flour.
I use both baking powder and baking soda, to cover both dutch processed cocoa or unsweetened cocoa so you can use whatever is in your pantry.
Cocoa powder. I use a quality brand when I can such as Valhorona or Divine brand cocoa. You can also use cacao powder which is healthiest. I have recently been listing unsweetened cocoa in my chocolate recipes however because so many readers told me cacao powder was just too expensive and sometimes hard to find.
Veggie Puree. Instead of oil and eggs, I use a vegetable puree. In this recipe, and often in baked goods, I use sweet potato puree for the additional sweetness but pumpkin puree or even butternut squash puree work just as fine. I suggest canned puree for the smoothness instead of trying to make it fresh. Fresh could result in lumpy batter or overmixed batter as you try to remove lumps and overmixed leads to rubbery batter.
Organic cane sugar. You can use coconut palm sugar if you prefer. The Wholesome brand is organic and fair trade if you want to stick with organic cane sugar. Cane sugar typically creates a cakier muffin texture.
The rest of the ingredients include dairy free milk, vanilla, and salt.
Chocolate chips. To make the muffin double chocolate. I use a dairy-free semi-sweet chocolate chip by Enjoylife. You can use your favorite chips.
How Many Calories are in a Healthy Chocolate Muffin
I am all for having muffins, especially healthier ones, without a thought about calories. But it just so happens that Google says this question is quite popular, so I can tell you my chocolate muffins run under 160 calories per.
The calories are fairly low in this muffin because a vegetable puree is used instead of oil and other dairy ingredients which typically hikes the calories.
How to Make Healthy Chocolate Muffins
1. Into a large mixing bowl, add in the dry ingredients, and stir up until blended.
2. Add in the wet ingredients including sugar.
3. Use a hand-mixer to just barely mix all ingredients into a batter. Do not overmix or you'll get rubbery muffins.
4. Fold in chocolate chips. Pour into pan. Sprinkle chips on top.
5. Bake at 400 F for 5 minutes and reduce temperature to 350 F for another 10 minutes. The reason for the initial hot bake is to trigger the rise.
How to Store Healthy Chocolate Muffins
Store cooled muffins in a sealed container in the refrigerator for a week. Or freezer for three months.
Other Healthy Chocolate Recipes
Chocolate Frosted Donuts
Chocolate Chickpea Clusters
Dairy-Free Chocolate Cake
Chocolate Cream Pie
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Healthy Chocolate Muffins
Ingredients
Chocolate muffins
- 1 ¾ cup all purpose flour (for gluten-free, use a gluten-free All Purpose flour )
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 3 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder (or cacao powder which is healthier but more expensive)
- pinch of salt
- ½ cups sweet potato puree or pumpkin purée (I used canned and unsweetened)
- ½ cup organic cane sugar or coconut palm sugar
- ¾ cup dairy-free milk
- 1 tsp vanilla
- ¼ cup chocolate chips to fold into batter, and a few to sprinkle on top
Instructions
Prep
- Preheat the oven to 400°F.
- Line a cupcake tin with paper liners
Make chocolate muffins
- In a large bowl, mix up flour, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa powder, and salt.
- Once dry is blended, add in pumpkin puree, sugar, milk, and vanilla. Stir or use a hand-mixer only enough to combine ingredients.
- Fold in most of the chocolate chips, holding back some to sprinkle on top.
- Use a cookie scoop or spoon to fill wells nearly to the top. Tap pan on counter to even top.
- Sprinkle on the remaining chocolate chips.
- Bake for 5 minutes at 400 F and then turn oven down to 350 F. Bake for 20 minutes more or until tester comes out clean.
- Cool pan for 10 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack.
Store muffins
- Store covered lightly for one day on the counter; any longer and they turn soggy. You can refrigerate them covered for a week, or freeze for a month. If you freeze, just set them on the counter to defrost for 20 minutes.
Nutrition
Dee Dine is founder of Green Smoothie Gourmet, a plant based recipe blog, and author of the recent cookbook, Crazy Healthy with 4 Ingredients and another immunity-boosting smoothie shot book, 4-Ingredient Smoothies + Juices , due out in January 2021. On this blog you'll find incredibly easy recipes with hidden veggies for anyone wanting to eat healthier, regardless of diet. Dee has graduate degrees in sciences and journalism, editor at The Feedfeed and a nutritional expert at WikiHow. More about Dee Dine here.
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