The first time I heard of someone combining chocolate and pumpkin, I swore I would NEVER do that. It just did not sound appetizing. But after playing around with some pumpkin based recipes, I decided to give it a whirl. (Side Note: I always cringe when I am creating a new recipe for fear that I am going to waste a bunch of expensive ingredients and end up with a mess that gets fed to the chickens. Yes, chickens eat ANYTHING.)
That little experiment has turned out to be one of my very favorite recipes and one that my husband declared is too amazing not to share with the world. These muffins check all the boxes. They are moist – not crumbly. They store well in the fridge or the freezer. And if you have one with a cup of coffee it’s like a spa treatment for your taste buds.
Before we get to the actual recipe, I want to share a few notes that will help you achieve consistently good results:
- Bob’s Red Mill Rice Flour (white or brown) is the most finely ground gf flour I’ve found. Many other brands seem ok right out of the oven, but once the muffins have cooled they develop a gritty texture. Stick with Bob’s Red Mill.
- I use parchment liners for the muffin tin. Regular paper liners tend to stick and you lose a lot of the muffin – or end up trying to pick it off the paper with your teeth. Lovely.
- For this recipe, I use Guittard brand cocoa powder and semi-sweet chocolate chips. I switched to Guittard because they are a brand that is both readily available and ethically sourced. I have a bit of a problem giving my family a treat that potentially hurt someone else’s family in production.
Without further ado, let’s get to the recipe!
INGREDIENTS:
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup Guittard cocoa powder
1 can pumpkin
4 eggs
1/2 cup cooking oil
1 cup water
1 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 cups Bob’s Red Mill rice flour
1/2 cup golden flax meal
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
1 cup Guittard semi-sweet chocolate chips
Preheat Oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin tins with 24 parchment liners.
In a large mixing bowl, use a wire whisk to sift the sugar and cocoa powder together. Add the pumpkin and whisk until well blended. Add the eggs one at a time, whisking after each addition. This step is important because if you don’t mix the eggs well, you could end up with strings of egg white running through the muffins – not appetizing.
To the pumpkin mixture, add the water, oil, and vanilla. Stir well.
In a separate mixing bowl, combine all of the remaining ingredients except for the chocolate chips. Sift them together, making sure that there are no powdery lumps. You can use a spoon, fork, or a whisk to do this. It is not necessary to use an actual sifter.
Next, add the bowl of dry ingredients to the pumpkin mixture and stir until completely incorporated. Then add the chocolate chips and stir again.
Spoon the muffin batter evenly into the 24 parchment lined muffin cups. Place in the preheated oven and bake for 20 minutes.
Once out of the oven, let the muffins sit for 5-10 minutes then carefully remove them (with the parchment still attached) from the pans.
ENJOY!
A final note about these delicious muffins: you may have noticed that with the amount of pumpkin and flax meal in the ingredient list that this is a fairly high fiber recipe. On the one hand, this is an excellent way to add fiber to your diet without feeling like you are being punished. On the other hand, you do not want to eat 10 of these muffins at one time. They taste good enough to just keep eating but that could be a little too much “roughage” as my grandma would say.