Moist Double Chocolate Espresso Muffins (With Sour Cream)

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!

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.

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!

Make these breakfast recipes next!