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These chocolate brownie muffins are ridiculously good! They have deep chocolate flavor, soft fudgy centers, and sky high bakery-style tops with pools of melty chocolate in every bite. This is the kind of chocolate muffin recipe you make when you want a sweet treat that’s delicious any time of the day.
For more muffin recipes, bake my moist triple chocolate muffins and bakery style chocolate chip muffins next!
Have you ever baked chocolate muffins and as soon as they cool off, they’re all hard and dry? Well, you’re in the right place because these brownie muffins are chocolatey, slightly fudgy, and SO moist, you’ll think that you’re eating the most delicious fudgy brownies… but in muffin form. And I love that for us.
With a few simple tips and tricks, I’ll have you dancing in the kitchen, in literal chocolate heaven!
Quick Overview: Fudgy Chocolate Muffins
- 🥣 Prep Time: 15 mins
- 🍰 Bake Time: 17-20 mins
- 👥Makes: 12 muffins
- 🔥Method: Melt chocolate, whisk into the batter, then bake!
- 🥣Flavor Profile: Deeply chocolatey!
- ⭐Difficulty: Easy
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Table of contents
Why You’ll Love this Recipe
- This recipe uses actual chocolate in the muffin batter, giving you the fudgy texture I love in my homemade brownies while keeping the muffins nice and fluffy. It’s the perfect balance of the two!
- Easy to make! This is a super easy recipe that comes together without a stand mixer or handheld mixer.
- The perfect snack AND the ultimate chocolate treat! I love the versatility of these muffins. They make a great back to school treat for both breakfast muffins or after school. They also double as a great dessert with a scoop of ice cream.
- Satisfies your chocolate craving! If chocolate is your guilty pleasure, grab one of these and you’ll get your chocolate fix immediately.
Key Ingredients
(full list of ingredients and measurements can be found in the recipe card)
- Quality semi-sweet chocolate adds rich, real chocolate flavor and creates melty pockets throughout the muffins for a true bakery-style result.
- Dutch-process cocoa powder provides deep chocolate flavor and dark color with a smooth, less acidic taste that gives these muffins a brownie-like richness.
- Brown sugar adds moisture and subtle caramel notes while helping create a soft, fudgy texture.
- Hot Coffee enhances the flavor of the cocoa powder and helps melt the chocolate, giving the muffins a deeper chocolate flavor. You can also use hot water and espresso powder if you don’t have any coffee on hand.
- Vegetable oil keeps the muffins moist and tender, producing a softer crumb than butter and helping them stay fresh longer.
- Sour cream adds richness and moisture while improving texture and helping the muffins rise properly.
Step by Step Instructions
Step 1: Bloom the chocolate base. Pour piping hot coffee over the chopped chocolate, butter, oil, and cocoa powder. Whisk until smooth, then whisk in the brown sugar.
Step 2: Finish the batter. Let the chocolate mixture cool for 5 minutes. Whisk in the eggs, sour cream, and vanilla, followed by the dry ingredients. Fold in the chocolate chips.
Step 3. Fill the muffin pans. Line alternating cups in two muffin pans and fill each liner to the top. Add a few extra chocolate chips, then pour a small splash of water into each empty cup.
Pro Baking Tips For The Best Chocolate Muffins
- Use high quality chocolate – I love chocolate chips but for this recipe, you’ll need a quality baking chocolate. I recommend 64% guittard semi-sweet baking chocolate, it has a balanced chocolatey and sweet flavor, perfect for brownie muffins. Don’t skip this!
- Measure your ingredients! The correct amount of dry ingredients and wet ingredients is critical to the success of the recipe. Use a kitchen scale to measure your ingredients for the best results. Grams measurements are provided in the recipe card.
- Don’t skip the resting time! Allowing the brownie batter to rest, this gives the flour time to hydrate as well as allowing the baking powder to work its magic – making for those sky high domes and a super moist muffin!
- Add water to the muffin tin in the empty muffin cups. About half way up is sufficient. This prevents the pan from warping in the oven and also creates extra moisture, keeping those muffins perfect soft.
- Cover the muffins with plastic wrap while cooling. I do this with my black velvet cake – it traps moisture from escaping, basically steaming the muffins, keeping them SUPER soft and tender.
Recipe FAQs
Technically yes, you can bake brownie mix in a muffin pan, but the results will be more akin to brownie bites as opposed to brownie muffins.
Brownies contain more sugar and eggs and don’t tend to be as fluffy as muffins. Muffins also have a different presentation in that they are baked in a muffin pan and tend to have more height and an airier texture.
Although both chocolate muffins and cupcakes may look alike and both have chocolate flavor, muffins are bigger and tend to have less sugar and fat than cupcakes.
More Muffin Recipes
Breakfast
Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Muffins
Breakfast
Banana and Nutella Muffins
Breakfast
Triple Chocolate Muffins
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If you make this recipe, please leave a star rating on the recipe card and comment below! You can also tag @BritneyBreaksBread on Instagram and hashtag #britneybreaksbread so I can celebrate your beautiful creations!
Chocolate Brownie Muffins
Equipment
- Tulip Muffin Liners (regular muffin liners work too)
Ingredients
- 2/3 cup (160 g) Coffee, (hot)
- 3 oz (85 g) Semi-Sweet Chocolate , (60-65% cocoa), see notes
- 4 tbsp (56 g) Salted Butter
- 1/2 cup (112 g) Vegetable Oil
- 1/2 cup (43 g) Dutch Processed Cocoa Powder
- 1 cup (220 g) Brown Sugar
- 2 large (100 g) Eggs, (room temperature)
- 1/2 cup (120 g) Sour Cream, (room temperature)
- 2 tsp (10 g) Vanilla Extract
- 1 2/3 cups (200 g) All Purpose Flour
- 1 tsp (4 g) Baking Powder
- 1/2 tsp (2 g) Baking Soda
- 3/4 tsp Kosher Salt
- 1 cup (170 g) Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
Instructions
- In a medium heat safe mixing bowl, add coffee and microwave for 1-2 minutes, until piping hot. Right out of the microwave, add quality semi-sweet chocolate, butter, vegetable oil, and cocoa powder. Whisk together until the chocolate and butter are fully melted. 2/3 cup Coffee 3 oz Semi-Sweet Chocolate 4 tbsp Salted Butter 1/2 cup Vegetable Oil 1/2 cup Dutch Processed Cocoa Powder
- Add in the brown sugar and continue to whisk together for about 1 minute, until the sugar begins to dissolve. Set aside to cool for about 5 minutes, then add eggs, sour cream, and vanilla extract and whisk until combined, about 30 seconds. 1 cup Brown Sugar 2 large Eggs 1/2 cup Sour Cream 2 tsp Vanilla Extract
- Add in the dry ingredients – all purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, and kosher salt. Whisk together until there's no visible patches of flour, about 30 seconds, then add chocolate chips and mix until the chips are evenly dispersed. 1 2/3 cups All Purpose Flour 1 tsp Baking Powder 1/2 tsp Baking Soda 3/4 tsp Kosher Salt 1 cup Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
- Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Let the batter sit while the oven is preheating.
- Once the oven is preheated, grab your 2 muffin pans and line every other muffin cup with muffin liners (there will be 6 cups with liners and 6 without). Fill each liner with muffin batter to the very top of the muffin cup. Sprinkle with additional chocolate chips.
- Fill the empty muffin tins with water, fill about half way up, about 4 tbsps of water.
- Bake ONE pan for 5 minutes at 425 degrees F, then reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees F and continue cooking for 13-15 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the muffin comes out with just a few moist crumbs. You can also gently (and carefully) tap the top of the muffins – if it springs back and doesn't sink in, the muffins are done.
- Note: we're baking one pan at a time, so between batches, you'll need to set your oven back up to 425 degrees F and repeat the process.
- Allow the muffins to cool for about 5 minutes, then remove from the pan and allow them to cool – you can eat them while warm or cool completely.
Notes
- Quality chocolate works best for melting and chocolate chips work best for folding into the batter. Chocolate chips are made to hold their shape in the oven, so they often contain less cocoa butter than a chocolate bar. They can melt into a thicker, less fluid mixture that’s harder to stir evenly into the batter. Use chopped chocolate bar for melting, then save the chips for folding in.
- Use room temperature ingredients! This applies to the eggs, buttermilk, and sour cream. Let these ingredients sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes to an hour prior to baking for the best chocolate muffins.
- Measure your ingredients! The amount of dry ingredients and wet ingredients is critical to the success of the recipe. Use a kitchen scale to measure your ingredients for the best results.
- Don’t skip the resting time! Allowing the brownie batter to rest, this gives the flour time to hydrate as well as allowing the baking soda to work its magic – making for those sky high domes and a super moist muffin!
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Just a question: This recipe says makes 13, but the instructions say to put batter into 6 muffin cups & fill other 6 with water.
Can you just divide the batter between the 12 muffin cups?
Thank you!
you can, but they won’t bake up as moist and tall. I bake them in 3 rounds – 6 muffins at a time, baking the last (the 13th one) last.
good recipe! I do wish I took them out of the oven sooner because I feel they would’ve been better if they were fudgier because they turned out a bit dry, but the flavor was really yummy.
OMG, OMG, OMG!!!! What a crowd pleaser.
These are the best brownies that I have ever tasted/made. Third time making these babies. I had to literally double the recipe. One for now and a batch for the freezer to have at will.
Made these tonight and they are delicious. Unfortunately the tops sunk into the middle ruining the look. Any tips?
Glad that they were delicious! It sounds like they weren’t baked long enough. Did you make sure that a toothpick came out clean or with just a few crumbs prior to removing from the oven?