Fluffy, chocolate oat muffins are perfect for breakfast or dessert! These Chocolate Oat Muffins are not as sweet as regular muffins, making these a great way to start your day.
We have a love/hate relationship with muffins. They’re a delicious way to start the day, but they’re often loaded with sugar. Now we’re not saying there is anything wrong with lots of sugar, we LOVE sugar-y foods – just see our delicious catalogue of dessert recipes. However when it comes to starting our day we often want something a little less sweet than a traditional muffin. That’s where these Chocolate Oat Muffins come in handy. They’re lower in sugar, but high in flavour! But don’t be discouraged if you like your muffins a little sweeter, because we have an option for that too!
This recipe was inspired by the King Arthur Baking recipe for Oat Muffins. However we did borrow an oat-soaking technique from Sally’s Baking Addiction, Blueberry Oatmeal Muffins recipe.
When do I eat these Chocolate Oat Muffins?
Muffins are great for many things including breakfast, snacking, desserts, and more! They’re super versatile which make them great for the back-to-school season. Make a big batch of them, then enjoy all week long in the morning, for a mid-afternoon snack, or a late night dessert. Don’t have time to finish the muffins? No problem, just pack them up in an air-tight container and throw them in the freezer to keep until you’re ready to eat.
Top Tips for making Chocolate Oat Muffins:
- Soak the oats in the vegan buttermilk for at least 10 minutes. This is a technique we borrowed from Sally’s Baking Addicition Blueberry Oatmeal Muffins recipe. Soaking the oats allows for the oats to soak up most of the buttermilk, creating a thicker and creamier batter. Resulting in a fluffy, soft finished product.
- Mix the dry and wet separately so that the dry and wet ingredients will be evenly dispersed around the batter.
- Grease muffin tin and forgo muffin liners for a quick and easy muffin that you don’t loose any of on the sides of the wrapper. You can use liners, but we’d recommend avoid the waste with a little bit of non-stick spray or a brush of butter.
Substitutions for this recipe:
- Vegan Buttermilk – If you don’t want to make vegan buttermilk, you can simply use your preferred non-dairy milk.
- Vegetable Oil – We like vegetable oil because it’s cheap and fairly neutral in taste, but you can use a different oil if you prefer. Coconut oil would be a great substitute here, just make sure to melt it first.
Chocolate Oat Muffins
Ingredients
- 100 g (1 cup) old-fashioned oats
- 240 mL (1 cup) vegan buttermilk*
- 7 g (1 tbsp) ground flax seed
- 45 mL (3 tbsp) cold water
- 180 g (1½ cup) all-purpose flour
- 40 g (½ cup) cacao powder
- 3 g (1 tsp) hot chili powder
- 3 g (½ tsp) baking soda
- pinch salt
- 4 g (1 tsp) baking powder
- 80 mL (⅓ cup) vegetable oil
- 67 g (⅓ cup) packed brown sugar**
- 5 mL (1 tsp) vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup chopped chocolate, optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375F.
- In a bowl, combine oats and vegan buttermilk. Set aside to soak.
- In a small bowl, combine ground flaxseed and water. Set aside to thicken.
- To a large bowl, combine all-purpose flour, cacao powder, chili powder, baking soda, salt and baking powder. Set aside.
- Add vegetable oil, brown sugar, flax egg and vanilla extract to buttermilk/oats mixture - mix until combined.
- Add buttermilk mixture to dry ingredients and mix until combined. If using chocolate chunks, you'd mix them in at this point.
- Spray a muffin tin with non-stick spray, or using muffin liners, fill with batter.
- Bake for 17-20 minutes or until cooked all the way through. You do the toothpick test to be sure it's cooked - stick a toothpick into the centre of the muffin and if it comes out clean it's cooked!
- Let the muffins rest in the tin for 5-10 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.
Notes
**If you like your muffins sweeter, you can add up to an extra 67 g (or 1/3 cup) brown sugar. Or alternatively you can also top with a glaze, icing or maple butter!
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