These vegan chocolate chip mini muffins are moist, tender and full of chocolate flavor. A secret ingredient makes these perfectly sweet without adding any refined sugar!
My favorite type of muffin? It’s a close tie between chocolate or lemon poppyseed. There’s something so satisfying about eating cake in muffin form–and the best chocolate muffins and moist, close-crumbed and bursting with chocolate flavor. These hit the mark on all fronts! And if you’re avoiding refined sugar or even liquid sweeteners, these muffins are for you–they contain no refined sugar.
Instead, they use a secret ingredient: date paste.
What is date paste?
Date paste is made from blending dates with water until you have a smooth, sweet paste that can be used in all sorts of baked goods. Because of the natural sugar content in dates, they are a great way to add natural sweetness to your baked goods. They also add a good amount of moisture to these muffins. You might be surprised at how well date paste works in place of sugar!
Ingredients you’ll need for these sugar-free chocolate muffins
Many of these ingredients (like leaveners, oil and nut butter) you may already have in your kitchen. Medjool dates can be found at most markets in the dried fruit section. If you like, you can swap in all-purpose flour for the whole wheat flour and even the oat flour if you like (the texture will be just slightly less soft).
- Medjool dates: Sweet, plump dates add body and sweetness to these muffins!
- Ripe bananas: Bananas that are deeply spotted and brown have more natural sugars and will work in conjunction with the dates to sweeten these muffins.
- Whole wheat flour: I use whole wheat flour for a more wholesome nutritional profile, but you can use all-purpose flour instead.
- Oat flour: I like the tenderness that oat flour adds to baked goods, but you can use more whole wheat flour or all-purpose flour instead.
- Unsweetened cocoa powder. I use Hershey’s natural cocoa. You can use Dutch-process cocoa if that’s all you have.
- Neutral oil of choice: For example: grapeseed, canola, vegetable, avocado, etc.
- Nut butter of choice: I prefer peanut butter, but almond butter, sunbutter or Wowbutter can all work!
- Milk: You can use any milk of your choice. I typically use almond or oat milk.
- Chocolate chips: If you need to keep these muffins refined sugar free, look for sugar-free chocolate chips. I usually use regular chocolate chips.
How to make the muffins
These muffins can be made entirely in a blender or food processor! You’ll simply blend the ingredients in steps. First, you’ll blend together a smooth date paste. Once you blend in the rest of the wet ingredients, you’ll blend in the dry ingredients and then fold in the chocolate chips.
Portion the batter into a prepared muffin tin, bake and enjoy! This batter can also be baked in a loaf pan if you prefer a loaf cake.
What do sugar-free muffins taste like?
I can’t speak for all sugar-free muffins, but these particular chocolate muffins are moist and not too sweet with a soft, almost squishy crumb. If you add the optional chocolate chips, the mellow sweetness will be greatly enhanced with bursts of chocolate flavor. You can leave the date paste slightly chunky for a more rustic texture, but if you blend it until smooth, you won’t be able to tell there are dates in these!
If you loved these muffins, you may also like:
- For another chocolate-y treat with a secret ingredient that keeps the cake flourless and gluten-free, try my black bean chocolate cake!
- This cottage cheese cheesecake is made with just cottage cheese and Greek yogurt for a higher-protein version of a delicious classic cheesecake!
- A decadent flourless chocolate cake with an aquafaba meringue
- This lemon meringue pie has a tofu-based filling with an aquafaba meringue
Vegan Chocolate Mini Muffins (no sugar!)
Ingredients
For the muffins
- 1.5 cups Medjool dates, pitted and chopped
- 1 cup water
- 2 large ripe bananas
- ½ cup almond milk
- 2 tablespoons neutral oil of choice (canola, vegetable, grapeseed, etc.)
- 2 tablespoons peanut butter or nut butter of choice
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¾ cup whole wheat flour
- ½ cup oat flour*
- ¼ cup unsweetened natural cocoa powder (like Hershey's natural)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/2 cup sugar-free mini or regular chocolate chips (optional)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray a mini muffin tin or standard loaf pan with nonstick spray.
- Place chopped dates in a blender and pour in boiling water. Let sit for 5 minutes to help the dates soften. Blend until you have a smooth paste.
- Add bananas, almond milk, oil, nut butter and vanilla extract to the blender and blend until smooth.
- Add remaining dry ingredients and blend until smooth. Reserve a small handful of chocolate chips for garnish, then fold in the remaining chocolate chips.
- Place about a heaping tablespoon of batter into each mini muffin well and top with a few extra chocolate chips. Bake for 18-20 minutes. Muffins are done when they smell fragrant, tops look matte and spring back under your finger.
Orla
Hi Erika,
These look too good not to ry but id have to make adjustments. What do you think, would these ingrediants work? Whole meal flour to Gf plain flour, Banana to apple sauce, Almond milk to coconut, Pnut butter to pumpkin seed butter/Tahini, Choc chips to Cacoa nibs, Im a bit stuck on what to change Oat flour with? Also, im not sure if i should do a complete swop or tweek, any tips? I know, you’ll probably say experiment and i will. I can introduce oats into our diet when the weather gets colder, but id love this tall year round snack.
erika
Hi Orla! So sorry for the delay in my response–for some reason Wordpress doesn’t alert me to new comments when they’re posted anymore!
Anyway, I don’t have a lot of experience baking with plain GF flour, so I can’t say for sure how that would act in place of the whole wheat and oat flour–although I will say that the oat flour basically acts as a balancer to the whole wheat flour since the whole wheat tends to make baked goods a bit denser and tougher and oat flour helps keep them light and fluffy (as long as it’s used in conjunction with a gluten-full flour–otherwise it will just get very dense and gummy).
I think the milk and nut butter swaps should be fine–obviously switching to cacao nibs instead of chocolate will make these less sweet, so you might want to increase the sweetener if you like things on the sweeter side. Additionally, applesauce will be less sweet than banana, so again think about increasing the sweetener a little.
Let me know how your experiments turn out! I’d be very curious to hear how all of this bakes up! 🙂
Kristi
I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE these muffins! They are my go to for everything. I make them on the weekend, throw them in a large ziplock, freeze, and use throughout the week. They freeze wonderfully. I’m about to try them with raisin paste since my daughter’s friend’s birthday is coming up and I was asked to make cupcakes. She is allergic to nuts and apparently all the dates (even organic) I can find “may contain nuts.” Just a tip for anyone…if you fill the cupcake liner to the very top, they puff up and create a lovely rounded mushroom top.
erika
Ahhh Kristi so glad to hear you love these!!! Let me know how they turn out with raisin paste! And thanks for reading the tip for other readers 🙂 <333
Jamie
On Monday I baked some cupcakes using mostly sugar, vegan butter and oil. Today I baked these cupcakes and have to admit these tasted alot better and are so much better for me!! I didn’t add the two tablespoons of oil and threw in some walnuts for a bit of texture and they turned out fine. Thanks for sharing such a great recipe !
erika
Jamie, so happy to hear you liked them!! And good to know they work without the oil–the walnuts sound like an excellent touch!
Marilyn
These are SO good – they really are dance around the kitchen great. I halved the recipe, used a gluten free flour blend, and made the paste with about 10 prunes and probably 1 cup of water (I cooked the prunes a bit in water and pureed them with a stick blender). I also added walnuts. Absolutely perfect muffins and almost no guilt, thank you so much for the recipe!
Marilyn
I forgot I used canned coconut cream instead of almond milk.
erika
Marilyn!! You totally made my day! Talk about best comment ever 🙂 So glad the GF flour blend worked out for you–thanks for letting us all know and so glad you enjoyed the muffins!!!
Stephanie
I made your recipe as stated….and these chocolate muffins were delicious!!! I couldnt believe how moist they were. Thumbs up!!!
erika
Thanks for letting me know Stephanie!! So glad you enjoyed them 🙂
Lianna
OMGOMG I LOVEeee those massive double chocolate muffins from costco. I haven’t had one in ages but when I was a kid my mom would always buy the packs that came with 3 flavours and I would eat all of the double chocolate ones before anyone else could even try a piece haha making the date paste sounds kind of daunting but I’m willing to try it if it means a healthier and yummier version of my beloved costco favourite!
erika
Omg okay so I would be the one to take a piece of each muffin because I could never decide which one I wanted!! Except for one kind of darker brown colored one that I didn’t really like. And I’d pick all the blueberries out of the blueberry one. But the chocolate and lemon poppyseed!!! Swoooon.
Karen
Thanks for your lovely blog. Will try with PB2 since I’m using it to replace regular peanut butter. K.
erika
Hi Karen–thanks for the lovely comment! You know, I’d be a little wary of using PB2 instead of full-fat peanut butter since I used it partly to replace the need for additional oil in the muffins. But I would be curious to hear how it turns out if you do try it!
Sara
I made your recipe in bread version and forgot to add the almond milk. I’m not sure it made a difference. It still came out perfect. I wonder if you need it? For the bread version you have to remember servings. I cut mine into 12 servings… still the sugar is very high 17g… but better then white sugar. Thanks for the recipe!
Jen
These are DELICIOUS!! I made these tonight using raisin paste instead of date (I had a TON of raisins I needed to use), and they came out WONDERFUL! My husband is addicted to sugar, and I am trying to show him that we can still have sweet, delicious treats WITHOUT refined sugar! These were the PERFECT recipe to win him over! 🙂 He’s already eaten 2 of them! Thanks for a fantastic recipe! We’ll make these often for SURE!
erika
Jen, I am so happy to hear that you guys liked these!!! Thanks so much for letting me know 🙂 You’re awesome for helping your husband cut his sugar addiction–I know how powerful those sugar cravings can be!
Amycakes
Just wondering — these look great (!!) but do you think prunes will work as a sub for the dates?? I secretly love prunes and always have them lying around…
erika
Thanks Amy! To be honest, I don’t know if I’ve ever eaten a prune–are they as sweet as dates?
I just googled and according to The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Gluten-Free Vegan Cooking, yes, you can also make prune paste to use the way you would use date paste. Also apricot paste and raisin paste! I’m learning tons of new things 🙂 Hope that helps!
Brandi
Ahh I just checked out where you got the recipe inspiration from over at a muffin myth! That’s a great recipe. Of course I liked that you made it chocolate. I’ve wanted to try doing cookies with all dates, but haven’t done it yet. These look delicious. Do you taste banana? I hate bananas, lol!