Get your morning jolt with these double chocolate espresso muffins! Tons of dark chocolate flavor with rich coffee notes in a soft and fluffy chocolate muffin. The muffins are made with dutch processed cocoa powder for extra chocolatey flavor and then have semisweet chocolate chips folded in. I've used fine espresso powder to give us that strong coffee flavor!

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Nothing is better than a long weekend morning with copious amounts of coffee and fresh bakery style muffins! I've made a lot of vanilla muffins like my cinnamon swirl muffins and chocolate chip muffins, but I wanted to make a soft, moist, and fluffy chocolate muffin next!
To keep these chocolate coffee muffins extra moist, we're using both Dutch-processed cocoa powder and oil. Dutch-processed cocoa powder is higher in fat, so it won't dry out the muffins as much as natural cocoa powder. While I love using butter in my other baking recipes, oil is going to keep our muffins super moist and soft. Plus, no need to melt the butter!
If you want a super chocolatey muffin, you need to try my triple chocolate muffins or blueberry chocolate muffins.
Adding some instant espresso powder is going to really give us a zing of that coffee flavor we're looking for! And I've added chocolate chips because come on, who can say no to more chocolate? Let's get going!
Reasons why I love these muffins!
- Simple Ingredients: you only need 12 pantry ingredients to make these decadent coffee chocolate muffins, nothing super fancy here.
- No Mixer: now you know how much I love a no-mixer recipe! You just need a couple of bowls and a whisk, that's it.
- Tons of Rich Flavor: you get so much chocolate flavor thanks to blooming the cocoa powder (that's a fancy way to say adding hot liquid to cocoa powder to deepen the color and the flavor) and adding semisweet chocolate chips.
Grab your ingredients

- Cocoa Powder: I'm using Dutch-processed cocoa powder, which is going to make the muffins darker in color and richer in flavor. Plus, this type of cocoa powder reacts differently to leaveners like baking soda and baking powder. In a pinch, you can use unsweetened natural cocoa powder but just note that they won't look the same.
- Sugar: using a mixture of granulated sugar and light brown sugar is going to provide structure to the muffins and the brown sugar in particular will add more moisture. No dry muffins here please and thank you!
- Sour Cream: another secret weapon for super soft and moist chocolate muffins! The extra fat in sour cream will make the texture softer. Sour cream also reacts with the baking soda, giving our muffins even more of a rise.
- Espresso Powder: kind of a must have for espresso chocolate muffins! I'm using instant espresso powder, the type that's a very fine powder. You could use granules though since we're dissolving it in hot water. I prefer using espresso over coffee since I find it has a much stronger flavor.
- Oil: using a neutral oil like sunflower oil or vegetable oil is the perfect substitute for melted butter. We're still getting that fat from the oil which will give us the moist and tender muffin crumb we want, and we're not too concerned about having a buttery flavor since chocolate and coffee would usually overpower that flavor anyway.
Substitutions & Additions
- Chocolate Chips: I've tested this recipe with dark chocolate chips and semisweet chocolate chips, but I think this would also be great with white chocolate chips. Coffee chips? Does that exist? If they don't, they need to exist!
- Sour Cream: you could swap out the sour cream for buttermilk or Greek yogurt.
How to Make This Recipe

- Step 1: In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, oil, sugar, light brown sugar, sour cream, and hot coffee, until smooth.

- Step 2: Add in the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cocoa powder. Mix until smooth.

- Step 3: Stir in the chocolate chips. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the muffin batter rest for 30-60 minutes. This will help activate the leaveners so you get taller muffin tops!

- Step 4: Preheat your oven to 425ºFahrenheit and line two muffin pans with liner, lining every other cavity (like above!). Fill each liner so they're about three-quarters full or just over. Bake in the oven for 5 minutes, then without opening the oven door, lower the temperature to 350ºFahrenheit and bake for a further 15-18 minutes. Let the muffins cool in the pan for 10 minutes before removing to a wire cooling rack to cool completely.

My Tips for Bakery Style Muffins
- Baking 6 at a Time: I tend to recommend baking your muffins in two batches. By only filling every other muffin cavity (why is there no better word for that), you're giving the muffin top more room to grow.
- Resting Muffin Batter: by resting the muffin batter, we're giving the leaveners a chance to already start working. This is going to make your muffins taller and more like a bakery style muffin! Do you have to do this? Yes, or I'll show up at your home and yell at you. Ok, just kidding, it's optional.
- Starting at a High Temperature: another way to kick start the baking powder is to start baking the muffins at an initial high temperature, then lower the temperature after 5 minutes.
- Chocolate Chips: the secret to getting those bakery style muffin tops with shiny chocolate chips? Adding them on top of the muffins AFTER they're out of the oven. As soon as they come out of the muffin, I gently press extra chocolate chips on top of the hot muffins. They'll immediately get shiny and give you that beautiful bakery look.
Serving Suggestions
- Brunch Table: serve these with chocolate cinnamon rolls or brioche french toast casserole for the ultimate brunch! And don't forget to invite me!
- Afternoon Coffee: this makes the perfect afternoon snack with a cup of coffee.
- Small Batch: If you don't want to make a whole batch of these muffins, divide the ingredients in half and make them as directed!
Storage & Freezing
Once cooled, keep the chocolate muffins in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.
To freeze, place in a freezer bag or freezer-safe container and freeze for up to 2 months. Thaw them at room temperature for a few hours or overnight in the fridge. I recommend warming them up in the microwave for a few seconds before enjoying!


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Thank you!
Ella
Recipe

Moist Double Chocolate Espresso Muffins (with sour cream)
Equipment
- 2 Muffin pans
- Large Bowl
- Whisk
- Kitchen Scale
- Measuring Spoons
Ingredients
- 1 ¾ cups (200 grams) Flour
- 1 cup (205 grams) Brown sugar
- ⅓ cup (66 grams) Granulated Sugar
- ½ teaspoon Baking Powder
- 1 teaspoon Baking Soda
- 1 teaspoon Kosher Salt
- ½ cup (118 ml) Hot Water
- 1 cup (227 grams) Sour Cream room temperature
- 1 tablespoon Espresso Powder
- ½ cup (118 ml) Neutral Oil
- ¾ cup (63 grams) Dutch Processed Cocoa Powder
- 2 large Eggs room temperature
- 1 ½ cups (255 grams) Semisweet Chocolate Chips
Instructions
- In a jug or cup, whisk the hot water with the espresso powder.½ cup (118 ml) Hot Water, 1 tablespoon Espresso Powder
- In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, oil, sour cream, hot coffee, and sugars until smooth.1 cup (205 grams) Brown sugar, ⅓ cup (66 grams) Granulated Sugar, 1 cup (227 grams) Sour Cream, ½ cup (118 ml) Neutral Oil, 2 large Eggs
- Add the flour, cocoa powder, salt, baking soda and baking powder. Stir until almost smooth.1 ¾ cups (200 grams) Flour, ½ teaspoon Baking Powder, 1 teaspoon Baking Soda, 1 teaspoon Kosher Salt, ¾ cup (63 grams) Dutch Processed Cocoa Powder
- Stir in the chocolate chips.1 ½ cups (255 grams) Semisweet Chocolate Chips
- Cover with plastic wrap or a clean dish towel and let rest for 30-60 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 425℉/220℃ and line two muffin pan with liners. You want to line every other muffin hole, so you're baking 6 muffins at a time. This will give the muffin tops more space to rise.
- Fill each muffin cup with muffin batter until it's just over ¾ full.
- Bake at 425℉ for 5 minutes, then decrease temperature to 350℉/175℃ for 15-18 more minutes.
- Let the muffins cool in the pan for 10 minutes before removing to a wire cooling rack to cool completely. For that bakery style look, as soon as they come out of the oven I like to press chocolate chips on top of the muffins.













Carm says
Yum I love and chocolate and coffee so I'll let you know when I make them.