Best Chocolate Chip Muffin Bake Off

If you’re looking for the BEST chocolate chip muffin recipe, we tested 9 popular recipes in one day to find a bakery-worthy muffin!

As you might have guessed from prior experiments (the lemon poppy seed muffin bake off and blueberry muffin bake off), I am a huge muffin fan. To me, muffins are basically an excuse to eat cake (my favorite food) any time of day. My problem, however, is that most muffin recipes don’t come close to the beautifully domed, tight-crumbed-yet-moist muffins that you see in bakeries and coffee shops.

So in this bake off, we set out to find the absolute best version of an American classic: chocolate chip muffins. Let’s dive into the recipe analysis!

METHODOLOGY // RESULTS // FACTORS // ANALYSIS // RECOMMENDATIONS

Methodology

• 30 total tasters
• All ingredients were measured by weight according to King Arthur (unless the recipe specified weights)
• All recipes were baked the day of tasting
• Recipes were either baked in a Williams Sonoma muffin pan with muffin liners or in a Wilton nonstick muffin pan with nonstick spray
• Each taster ranked each muffin on a scale from 0-10 for flavor, texture and overall as a whole

Ingredients

• Gold Medal all-purpose flour
• King Arthur unbleached cake flour
• Trader Joe’s unsalted butter
• Kerrygold unsalted butter
• Daisy sour cream
• Chobani nonfat plain Greek yogurt
• Trader Joe’s semisweet chocolate chips
• Good & Gather mini chocolate chips
• Diamond Crystal kosher salt
• Imperial granulated and brown sugar

Results

After analyzing the data from 30 tasters, results of the crowd rankings are below. This bake off was quite interesting as there was a huge variety of preferences. My personal ideal muffin has a sugar top, a tall dome and is quite sweet. However, a lot of people praised our third place winner (Sugar Spun Run) for its modest size and less sweet flavor profile. (Makes sense–not everyone wants cake disguised as a muffin like I do.)

Virtually all of these recipes have rave reviews, so picking one is simply a matter of finding the muffin profile you like. More of a coarse, less sweet crumb vs. a tall and bready texture vs. spiked with cinnamon or tender as a vanilla cake? There’s tons of options!

Below you can find some highlights, but as always, I recommend reading through the entire blog post to decide which sounds best to you.

The crowd favorite: Butternut Bakery!

Erika’s picks: Baran Bakery, Butternut Bakery

Best easy chocolate chip muffin (fastest to make): Beach House Kitchen

For a more cake-like crumb: Butternut Bakery, Baran Bakery, What’s Gaby Cooking

For a fluffy, not-too-sweet classic muffin crumb: Sally’s Baking Addiction, The Beach House Kitchen, How Tasty

For a more coarse crumb: Sugar Spun Run, Broma Bakery, Sugar Geek Show

Factors for making the best chocolate chip muffins

Temperature drop

Out of all the recipes, 7 out of 9 recipes called for starting the muffins at a higher temp (usually 425) and dropping to 350/375 for the rest of the bake. I’ve always wondered if this technique–we’ll call it the high/low technique–really makes a difference.

My conclusion: it definitely does! But only if there’s enough batter to provide volume. Butternut Bakery, How Tasty and Sally’s Baking Addiction all used the high/low technique and resulted in impressive domes. Sugar Spun Run also used the same technique but the relatively scant amount of batter didn’t allow its muffin tops to reach the height of others.

The recipes that did not use this technique (Sugar Geek Show and What’s Gaby Cooking) had relatively flatter domes.

Baran Bakery was an interesting case with both a generous amount of batter and the high/low technique. These spread out instead of up with a relatively flat profile. My hypothesis is that the high hydration batter doesn’t have sufficient gluten/structure to reach the same heights as other recipes.

Butter vs. oil

As always, my hypothesis was that recipes with a mixture of butter and oil would perform the best. This held true with our winner (Butternut Bakery) but not with our butter-based second place recipe (Baran Bakery). The other butter and oil-based recipes landed in 3rd (Sugar Spun Run), 6th (Sally’s Baking Addiction) and 8th place (How Tasty). My explanation for this random spread: I think Sally’s was a bit unfairly marked down for its inclusion of cinnamon. Meanwhile, How Tasty simply didn’t have enough fat to create a competitively tender crumb.

The oil-based recipes (What’s Gaby Cooking and The Beach House Kitchen) vs. butter-based also didn’t demonstrate a clear pattern. Overall, I think using a combination of butter and oil will raise the likelihood of a more moist muffin, but the combination alone isn’t enough. There also needs to be a sufficient amount of fat, sugar and additional moisture to create a truly superior, moist and perfectly muffin.

Creamed butter vs. melted

Sugar Geek Show was the only recipe that required creaming the butter vs. using melted butter or oil. I was excited to see whether the creaming method would lead to a more cake-like texture. Spoiler alert: it did not (which I think was due more to the ingredient ratios than the creaming method).

After this experiment, it became clear why muffins typically don’t use the creaming method. They simply don’t need it! Butternut Bakery and Baran Bakery were as tender as cake while using melted butter. To achieve a great, classic, fluffy muffin texture, using melted butter or oil simply whisked into the batter is all you need.

Sugar vs. brown sugar

The grand majority of recipes used only granulated sugar. The Beach House Kitchen was the only recipe to use all brown sugar; Sugar Geek Show was the only recipe to use a mixture of brown and white.

While I’m normally a fan of the flavor that brown sugar adds, the brown sugar gives a vaguely whole wheat-y appearance that I didn’t find as visually appealing. I personally think the quintessential chocolate chip muffin should have a very vanilla cake-adjacent base, so white sugar would be my preference.

How Tasty was the only recipe that called for caster sugar. I made my own caster sugar by blitzing regular granulated sugar in my Nutribullet for 30 seconds until it was finely ground. The benefit of caster sugar is its quicker and easier absorption into the batter. However, you can easily substitute regular sugar into this recipe.

Dairy

All recipes used sour cream, buttermilk or Greek yogurt except for The Beach House Kitchen, which used milk. I think TBHK is a perfectly respectable muffin, but all the top muffins had a slight tangy note that I think is essential to give some dimension to an otherwise plain batter.

For a SUPER tangy recipe, I strongly considered America’s Test Kitchen brown butter chocolate chip muffins. However, there were so many comments that said these muffins were TOO tangy that I decided not to test them. I’m still intrigued though!

Cinnamon

I was curious whether the inclusion of cinnamon in Sally’s Baking Addiction and The Beach House Kitchen would enhance the overall flavor. Generally, most tasters did not prefer the cinnamon (even with just a 1/2 tsp in TBHK). Overall, most said it detracted from the flavor of a classic chocolate chip muffin, which makes total sense! I’d be wary of adding cinnamon to your muffin batter unless you know you like it.

FAQ

Analysis of the best recipes

Sugar Geek Show: a coarse-crumbed muffin with a good level of salt and vanilla

This was the only recipe that calls for cake flour instead of all-purpose flour. While every other recipe called for melted butter (more typical for muffin recipes), this was the only recipe that called for creaming the butter, cake style! Liz also calls for a mix of brown and white sugar along with buttermilk and mini chocolate chips.

Given all the adjacencies to cake (creaming, cake flour), I was surprised to find these had one of the most coarse, cornbread-like crumbs. Underneath the delightfully caramelized muffin lid, there’s a slightly spongy and almost greasy quality to the crumb. The flavor, while buttery and moderately sweet, reminds me of a slightly bland pound cake. These muffins were generally modest sized with a shallow dome (I picked one of the most domed of the bunch to photograph). Overall, it’s a solid muffin. But given the slightly more laborious nature of this recipe, it wouldn’t be my first pick to make again.

Taster comments:

• Liked the crispy top, moist/balanced texture and vanilla/brown butter flavor.
• The texture is almost bready with a coarser seeming crumb. This one had a salty butter flavor that I did like. I don’t think this had enough chocolate chips + chip distribution for me either. On the drier side.
• This muffin was notably stiffer than others. While it was dense, it seemed slightly drier than others with less of an apparent oil taste. I was personally a fan of the low-sweetness level of the muffin itself which I thought really helped the flavor of the chocolate chips shine
• There’s a sort of sticking quality to the texture of the cake on this one. I really liked the browned portions of this one, possibly because it helps fight back against the chocolate chips and was slightly less sweet.
• Good level of salt and flavor but the baking soda after taste is distracting.
• Dry. Very pound cake like in terms of taste, a little bland. Spongey texture

The Beach House Kitchen: the platonic ideal of a one-bowl, simple and fluffy chocolate chip muffin with a hint of cinnamon

This recipe bears some resemblance to the prolific and very simple All Recipes chocolate chip muffin recipe. However, many reviews of that particular recipe noted that the muffins weren’t sweet enough. The Beach House Kitchen’s recipe seemed like an enhanced version with more oil, sugar and egg, so I chose to try it instead. This is probably the simplest of all the recipes I tested, and it was the only recipe to use all brown sugar. A base of oil means no melting butter–everything gets mixed up in one bowl!

These felt like the exact representation of the amount of work that went into them. They are extremely simple to throw together, and the result in a simple, homey muffin. They have a fluffy, moderately dense crumb. They’re lightly sweet, as you’d expect from a muffin (rather than cake) with a good distribution of chocolate chips. I think these muffins ranked a little lower partly due to the cinnamon as well as darker hue of the brown sugar that some interpreted as whole wheat flour. Many tasters didn’t prefer the hint of spice, so I’d omit it if you don’t prefer cinnamon with chocolate.

Overall, these felt satisfying, classic and inoffensive to me. I’d recommend them if you need a quick muffin fix!

Taster comments:

• I liked both the density of the crumb on this one and the cinnamon, but I realize not everyone likes cinnamon with their chocolate.
• Liked the light flavor. Good muffin base. Domed top.
• Denser texture, similar to banana bread. Hints of cinnamon were nice (reminds me of a spice loaf) and I liked the larger chips more but overall was a little too dry
• The muffin is a little dense for my taste. The spices add a nice flavor but make the muffin taste less like what I think of as a chocolate chip muffin.
• The muffins base was a bit bland and also had a flavor that I couldn’t quite put my finger on (whole wheat flour?) which I didn’t love. The texture was slightly dry and tough. This muffin did have a good ratio of chocolate.

How Tasty: tall, packaged muffin lookalikes that are bready and not too sweet

I was instantly captivated by how similar these looked to packaged muffins when I saw them on YouTube! After pouring over the ingredient list, I couldn’t find anything unusual that might account for their perfect appearance–possibly the caster sugar? This is a recipe that uses a slightly higher ratio of oil than butter. It bears similarities to Sally’s Baking Addiction, but uses slightly less fat, more egg and buttermilk.

I was SO impressed by how tall these baked up! They had enormous domes that made for extremely picturesque muffins. Did they taste as good as they looked? Sadly, it was a no from me. While beautifully fluffy and soft, the texture was quite bready and the not-very-sweet flavor only compounded the feeling of eating slightly sweet bread.

I also agree with the tasters who commented that these needed more chocolate. I’d love to try these again with more mini chocolate chips and more sugar. A note that many people have left rave reviews about these muffins–I think these would be absolutely delightful as written for those who aren’t used to super-sweet desserts (ahem, me).

Taster comments:

• This one tastes almost identical to traditional yellow cake mix which I LOVE. The level of sweetness was perfect – I think I was getting a bit of an egg-ier taste as well which stands out to me more in traditional boxed cake mixes. While I love the addition of the chocolate chips here, I’d frankly enjoy eating this muffin on it’s own too
• I love that it’s huge and the crumb is fluffy. Flavor is a little bland and I wish it had more chocolate chips
• The texture was nice, ever so slightly dry but fluffy. The muffin could have used more chocolate, and the base had a very neutral flavor that I could see working with a lot of muffin mix ins.
• I think this would probably be more appealing to someone who falls on the “bread” side of the “is a muffin cake or bread” spectrum. An airier crumb but also less sweet and less flavorful to me, to the point that it tastes a bit floury. Personally, I’ve always fallen far on the cake end of the spectrum, so this muffin was not meant to be for me.
• Appearance is spot on, cakey texture, but bland flavor. Need more chocolate chips!

Sally’s Baking Addiction: a beautifully domed, fluffy and slightly bready muffin with a hint of cinnamon

As the queen of modern day baking classics, Sally’s recipe was a must-try! I first heard about the high/low baking technique for high-domed muffins from Sally’s blog (unsure if she invented it, but it’s now quite common). The straightforward recipe uses a 1:1 ratio of butter to oil with a bit of sour cream and milk for richness. She also enhances the batter with cinnamon and optional nutmeg (I did not include the latter).

From a ratio perspective, Sally’s recipe has the same amount of fat, eggs, sugar and wet ingredients as the winning Butternut Bakery recipe but half a cup more flour. The additional helps these muffins achieve impressive heights, but at the expense of the moisture and sweetness levels. In comparison to more cake-like muffins, this was ever-so-slightly more bready and less moist. If you’re looking for a true muffin that’s not too sweet, I think anyone would be well served with this recipe!

Note: similar to TBHK, most tasters didn’t love the hint of cinnamon in this recipe. I’d consider omitting it unless you know you love cinnamon and chocolate together.

Taster comments:

• I love (what I’m assuming to be) the subtle addition of cinnamon here – pairs very well with chocolate. While the overall texture was a bit on the denser/breadier side, the look and overall feel of this sample reminds me of a traditional muffin
• Good strong crust, love the bigger chocolate chips, chips are evenly distributed, buttery flavor
• Texture was reasonably moist. I noticed a spice in the base that maybe was cinnamon? I don’t think the spice complemented the chocolate very well, but I could imagine wanting to try this muffin again with apples instead of chocolate.
• Don’t like the dark (whole wheat-y?) appearance of the crumb, interesting subtle spices
• The muffin has a slightly dry, crumbly texture and tasted like there is amaretto or some other flavoring. Again the flavoring makes it taste less like a chocolate chip muffin to me.

What’s Gaby Cooking: a moist, buttery, plush muffin with a caramelized top and sunken chocolate chips

As one of two oil-based muffin recipes, Gaby’s recipe seemed promising for a few reasons. A generous amount of sour cream and an additional egg yolk seemed promising for richness and flavor. Also, the addition of hot water to the batter was unique, and I was curious if it would affect the texture.

This was the only muffin where most of the chocolate chips sunk to the bottom half, which generally happens when the batter is too thin to keep the chocolate chips suspended. While there could be an element of baker’s error here, I do think the hot water could have contributed to thinning out the batter.

It is also generally a thinner batter (relative to TBHK, it has more liquid and slightly less flour). But the muffin texture itself was quite moist and plush with a slightly coarser crumb and flavor that reminded me of an olive oil cake. As someone who loves salty-sweet baked goods, I thought the salt could be reduced by a hair. Next time, I’d try these with 3/4 tsp salt and mini chocolate chips!

Taster comments:

• This one is possibly controversial because the chocolate chips sank to the bottom, but I LIKE it. I like that you get that layer of almost solid chocolate on the bottom and then that lovely crumb above it. I rated this one BEST CRUMB. I could really taste both the chocolate and the batter/crumb.
• I really liked the flavor of this muffin–salty and buttery! The texture and favor reminded me of a sponge cake – I noticed this sample has particularly large (and very sweet) chunks of chocolate chips which admittedly made it difficult to taste the muffin on it’s own.
• All the chips sank to the bottom so aesthetically not the best but surprisingly really enjoyed the flavor and overall texture of the muffin. Felt very moist and deep flavor in the chocolate.
• Good texture, flavor has a little tang to it, don’t like that the chips sunk / are kind of overwhelming in a bite
• Kind of tough to rate as the chocolate chip distribution was pretty extreme. We liked the chewiness and less sweet texture. We probably ate the most of this one (but left the chocolate) and surprised how much I like honestly confused but it’s so good??? I want to try it with SMALL CHOC CHIPS cos I like the interesting chewiness I find it satisfying to eat
• Almost like cornbread and all the chocolate fell to the bottom. Too much chocolate for my preference.

Broma Bakery: a crisp-topped, open-crumbed and buttery muffin

Broma Bakery was a highly requested recipe, and I chose to use it for its use of butter, Greek yogurt and buttermilk. The recipe specifies that the combination of yogurt and buttermilk provides the perfect balance of tang. I’m not 100% bought into this theory (I think if you used 100% Greek yogurt and thinned it with some milk, it would be quite similar), but I was curious to try.

One variable that I wish I had controlled better throughout this experiment was using muffin liners vs. not. (I used muffin liners for my not nonstick muffin pan and simply used spray on my nonstick muffin pan.) Broma was an example of a muffin that got baked in the nonstick muffin pan with no liners and achieved a beautiful crisp around the entire muffin.

I loved the crunchy sugar top of these muffins! The pale, fluffy interior had a sweet crumb that reminded me of a soft cornbread. Overall, I think the main flavor came from the crisp exterior and chocolate chips. I actually would have loved more tang in the actual muffin flavor but overall, it hit all the textural notes of a delightful muffin!

Taster comments:

• I described this one as “the most texturally rewarding,” because I love the contrast of the crunchy top/exterior crust to the decently moist, buttery interior. Reminds me of a bakery style muffin.
• Loved the flavor of this one!! I wish the crumb was a little fluffier but it tasted exactly how I expect a chocolate chip muffin to taste and I loved it! I loved the crunchy sugar topping and the even distribution of chips in the muffin.
• Liked the scone-like texture of the top and overall moist
• Cakey, warm flavors, tasted nostalgically like vanilla pudding mix.
• Very nice crust all around (not just the top), and a uniform crumb. It needs more chocolate, and has a good level of salt. A lot of flavor for this muffin came from the nicely browned crust and the chocolate.
• A little too sweet/too much chocolate but perfect texture and great flavor
• A very sturdy muffin! Maybe too dense, a little hard

Sugar Spun Run: a modest, sweet, moist muffin with an open, coarse crumb

Like Butternut Bakery, this recipe also calls for letting the batter sit out for up to an hour. Sam uses similar ratios to Sally’s Baking Addiction with a 1:1 ratio of canola and butter, but calls for buttermilk instead of milk. She also adds an extra egg white–an unusual move as most recipes add extra egg yolks for the additional fat. Sam notes that the egg white is key for a bakery-style light and fluffy texture.

Despite the relatively short height/lack of dome, these muffins had especially appealing caramelized, sugar-crusted tops. With a sweet, open and slightly coarser crumb, this felt like a slightly less greasy version of What’s Gaby Cooking. I personally consider a bakery-style muffin to be a bit cakier, but this hit all the marks for me in terms of moisture, softness and sweetness. Some thought it was a tad too sweet, but others praised the perfect, modest size. A muffin for the moderates!

Taster comments:

• Like the sugar top texture and small size of the muffin overall
• Surprised by how much I like this texture – feels like a less greasy version of [Sugar Geek Show] with a flavor that almost tastes like it has some lemon.
• I liked the texture of the top with the coarse grains of sugar giving you that crunch. I also liked the generosity of the chips. But I found it TOO sweet and a bit dry.
• The sugar crust was a nice textural contrast but a little too sweet. I noticed a slight tang to the flavor of the base (yogurt? Sour cream?) which was otherwise unremarkable.
• There’s an almost cornbread-esque quality to the crumb of this one. This is also the first one where I feel as though the cake itself is quite sweet rather than getting most of the sweetness from the chocolate.
• Pretty middle of the road. Felt its ok in flavor but not super moist. Not what I would reach back for.
• Really like the crispy top, but overall muffin was too dense

Baran Bakery: squishy-tender, decadent cake-like muffins with a sugary top

Baran Bakery’s recipe stood out to me for its use of heavy cream directly in the muffin batter. In order to get a tight, rich, moist muffin crumb, lots of fat and sugar are essential–and heavy cream definitely fills this role. Interestingly, Baran Bakery uses a similar ratio of ingredients to How Tasty, but nearly doubles the wet ingredients with 3/4 cup of both Greek yogurt AND heavy cream. I was intrigued to see how these would bake up.

While I was a bit disappointed in the way the muffin tops spread out instead of into a tall dome, I was blown away by the texture of these! They are ultra-tender and plush: the cakiest of the bunch. Flavor-wise, I almost feel that any tang gets drowned out by the richness of the cream. They are delicious, but I might bump up the vanilla, salt, and maybe even the ratio of yogurt next time.

The recipe does call for adding a full teaspoon of sugar on top of each muffin, which feels excessive. I loved the beautiful sugar tops, but I’d probably reduce this to 1/2 or 1/3 tsp sugar per muffin next time. Overall, an incredibly decadent muffin that I loved and have already made again.

Taster comments:

• Love the sugary crunchy top, flavor is the lightest and most cake-like, chocolate chips are a bit small but they do not overwhelm the cake. My favorite!
• Good classic muffin with a light and fluffy texture. The crunchy sugar was a nice touch on top but I felt it needed more depth of flavor and caramelization in taste.
• Definitely one of the most visually appealing muffins with the sugar crusted top, but the sugar on top made it a tad too sweet for me. The muffin without the sugar crust was a bit bland, and the muffin overall needed more chocolate.
• I like the sugared crust on the top and the amount of chips. Crumb is moist and bouncy. But it’s really lacking in flavor.
• I really liked this one in terms of visual aesthetic (this sounds so silly for a muffin). There’s something about the big, sugar-dusted, overflow style of muffin top that feels very welcoming and rustic. As far as actual taste goes, it was a very pleasant muffin that didn’t stand out to me much *except* that it was definitely my favorite muffin top thanks to the sugar dusting. The textural contrast is a chef’s kiss element for me.
• More like a cake. Enjoyed the sugar crust. Kind of neutral, a little too sweet.

Butternut Bakery: tender, moist muffins with light tang and a perfectly domed top

Anecdotally, I’ve noticed that letting pancake/pound cake/muffin batter sit out for a bit before baking seems to yield taller, better results. Jenna specifically calls for letting her muffin batter sit out for a full hour before baking, so I was curious to see if this would make a significant textural difference. Jenna’s recipe uses a higher ratio of butter with just a few tablespoons of oil. She also adds a tiny bit of maple syrup and calls for both sour cream and buttermilk. Plus mini chocolate chips!

I was thrilled when these came out of the oven with gorgeous domes that looked exactly like the photos! And even more thrilled when they tasted just as good as they looked. The soft, moist, almost squishy-tender texture (not quite as squishy as Baran Bakery) is nearly the exact texture of a packaged muffin. But with all the buttery flavor and slight tang of a really good homemade muffin. These absolutely nail the perfect balance of flavor, texture and aesthetics!

Taster comments:

• This is by far most moist and tasty combo. It has a delicate but tight crumb with good distribution of chocolate. Honestly would be thrilled with these if I made them or bought at a coffee shop
• Perfectly moist and buttery with a springy crumb and crunchy outside – well balanced
• Like the crispy edges of the top, nice dome, tastes kind of tangy which is welcome to break through sweetness
• Nice uniform and moist crumb. The flavor of the base gave me cakey cornbread vibes, and the corny flavor worked really well with the chocolate. Good ratio of chocolate.
• Super moist and so many chocolate chips which I loved even though it looked a little overwhelming with all the mini chips.

Thanks for reading!

If you enjoyed this bake off, you may also enjoy these other bake offs: