Gluten Free Chocolate Banana Muffins
These gluten free chocolate banana muffins are moist, fluffy and so easy to make. They’re healthy and can be made vegan and refined sugar free. Perfect for a simple snack, breakfast or healthy dessert!
If you’re like the rest of the world and made too much banana bread in the past few months but still have lots of ripe bananas lying around, these homemade chocolate banana muffins are for you!
This gluten free chocolate muffin recipe is rich and fudgy while still being light and fluffy, can be made vegan and refined sugar free! They come together in just about 30 minutes and are perfect for a healthy dessert or snack.
These muffins are made really moist thanks to oil, lots of banana, maple syrup, a bit of nut butter and egg! If you’re as obsessed with muffins as I am, be sure to try my blueberry oatmeal muffins or gluten free chocolate muffins next.
How to make gluten free chocolate muffins
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a muffin tray and set aside.
Add the bananas to a blender and puree until smooth. Measure out 1 1/2 cups. This is usually 3-4 medium/large bananas. Just make sure you have 1 1/2 cups worth! Add the banana puree to a large mixing bowl along with all remaining wet ingredients. Whisk until smooth.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet and whisk together until smooth. The batter will be on the thick side. Fold in the chocolate chips. Use a medium cookie scoop or spoon and add the batter the lined muffin tray. You want to fill eat about 3/4 of the way full.
Top with additional chocolate chips if desired. Bake for 18-23 minutes, my oven is usually 21, but check with a toothpick for doneness. Let cool in the tray for about 15 minutes, then remove and let finish cooling on a cooling rack. Try my bakery style gluten free chocolate chip muffins next!
Key ingredients
Banana. A few fresh bananas not only add a delicious flavor to these gluten free muffins, but also help keep them super moist! I like to puree the banana so there aren’t any chunks, but you can also just mash them. Same with my mini banana muffins!
Sugar. A mix of maple syrup and granulated sugar help sweeten these muffins. I like using coconut sugar to keep them refined sugar free, but whatever you have works!
Oil. Just a bit of oil will help moisten these muffins and fluff up the texture. I like using refined avocado oil, but any neutral flavored oil will work.
Nut butter. Another key ingredient to add moisture! I love almond butter because it has a neutral flavor, but peanut butter is so delicious with chocolate and banana.
Flour. This recipe calls for gluten free all purpose flour, and I highly recommend sticking to that for best results. I like Bob’s Red Mill 1:1 Baking Flour.
Cocoa. This is how we’ll get a rich chocolate flavor. Cocoa plus some chocolate chips of course.
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Make them vegan!
I have tested this recipe with both a regular egg and a flax egg and they turn out really well either way. If you want to use a flax egg, just combine 1 tablespoon of ground flax seeds (ground chia seeds work too) and 3 tablespoons of water. Whisk together and set aside to thicken. This will help bind all of the ingredients together. You can also sub for 1/4 cup of apple sauce or just 1/4 cup extra banana puree if you prefer.
My favorite chocolate
For this recipe you need cocoa powder and chocolate chips, either dark chocolate or regular. I’m not loyal to any one brand of cocoa powder, but Ghirardelli makes a great one! You can use either dutch processed or regular. Please do not use the Trader Joes cocoa powder, I have tried it several times in various recipes and it never turns out well!
For chocolate chips, I almost always use the enjoy life mini chocolate chips. The mini ones kind of melt right into the center of the muffin and makes them super fudgy!
How to store
Once prepared, these chocolate banana muffins will keep for about 3-5 days stored in a container at room temperature. You can keep them in the fridge to preserve for longer and then warm them up for 10 seconds in the microwave before eating!
Why did they turn out dense?
Banana muffins are generally more dense than other types of muffins simply because of the amount of banana in the batter. This particular recipe strikes a balance between light and fluffy and fudgy and dense. These should not be too dense, and if you’re worried about that happening, there are a few things to do to prevent it.
First, do not over mix the batter! This will force too much air and eventually cause the muffins to rise, then collapse, creating a dense texture.
Second, be sure to puree the bananas, don’t mash them. This is especially important if you’re using gluten free flour like I did. Banana puree will make the muffins much fluffier than mashed banana.
Still hungry? Try these!
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Double Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins
by: claire cary
Ingredients
Wet:
- 1 ½ cups banana puree about 4 bananas
- ¼ cup oil
- ¼ cup maple syrup
- ½ cup brown sugar
- ¼ cup nut butter I used almond
- 1 egg see notes for vegan
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Dry:
- 1 ¼ cup gluten free all purpose baking flour
- ½ cup cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon optional
- ⅔ cup chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Line a muffin tray and set aside.
- Add the bananas to a blender and puree until smooth. Measure out 1 1/2 cups. This is usually 3-4 medium/large bananas.
- Add the banana puree to a large mixing bowl along with all remaining wet ingredients.
- Whisk until smooth.
- Add in all dry ingredients aside from the chocolate and whisk until smooth. The batter will be on the thick side, but be sure to spoon and level the flour and cocoa powder.
- Fold in the chocolate chips.
- Use a medium cookie scoop or spoon and add the batter the lined muffin tray. You want to fill each pretty close to the top.
- Top with additional chocolate chips if desired.
- Bake for 18-24 minutes, my oven is usually 21, but check with a toothpick for doneness. Careful not to over bake or they will dry out!
- Let cool in the tray for about 15 minutes, then remove and let finish cooling on a cooling rack. Enjoy!
Notes
Comments
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I just made this recipe and it was pretty good! I subbed Apple sauce for the egg, though usually I do Chia Egg. Cut the sugar in half, subbed Agave syrup. And added 2 scoops Collagen powder. I will be making this again 🙂
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Have you made this recipe in a bread loaf pan instead of muffins?
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No, but should work fine! I’d start with a 50-55 minute bake time.
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Very impressive recipe (and flexible!!)! The muffins came out a perfect balance of dense and fluffy, and not overly sweet. I made the following substitutions/alterations:
– a bit more banana puree (probably a scant 1/4 cup, but added it anyway)
– did not pack the brown sugar
– added a bit extra salt
– used very thick chocolate Sunflower butter since I had it on hand and needed to use it
– used the following combination of flours: King Arthur’s gluten free measure for measure (1/2 cup), oat flour (1/2 cup), millet flour (1/8 cup or so), and brewer’s yeast (1/8 cup)
– added extra bit of natural cocoa powder
– I also blitzed the wet ingredients in a blender because I realized that the recipe called to blend the bananas, not mash them, so I just did the bare minimum pulsing to get everything smoothed out and not overwhip the egg.The oat flour and brewer’s yeast were used to boost nutrition for lactation. I am very pleased with how well these turned out given how many alterations were made. It is an incredibly forgiving recipe. The only “complaint” I have is that using natural cocoa caused a lighter cocoa flavor than using dutch cocoa, but it is required because of the baking soda. The muffins could be more chocolaty, so I may try adding more cocoa powder next time.
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Made these today and they are the most perfect muffins I have ever made! I have made banana bread and muffins before and they always turn out like dense little bricks. These are so light and fluffy and delicious. I made mine with Truvia sugar. I wanted a low glycemic option. Just replaced the maple and coconut sugar with Truvia’s brown sugar and it worked like a dream. I also used Lily’s chocolate chips dark and milk. Again perfect recipe. Thank you so much!
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Amazing! Thank you, Annie!
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Can you use regular flour for this instead of gluten free?
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This recipe is designed to be gluten free, but you can try!
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yummy just added more maple syrup to make it sweeter. Moist and delicious. Definitely a keeper.
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These came out perfectly! Thank you!
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These are SO GOOD!! So tender, fluffy, and delicious. I used Bob’s Redmill Paleo flour (gf), coconut oil, and CBs organic peanut butter. These will be on repeat for years to come. ♥️ Thank you for sharing!!
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Delicious! So glad you enjoyed these!
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I have almond flour and coconut flour. Can I use a combo of those and how much of each?
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I do not recommend that for this recipe. Almond and coconut flours absorb wet ingredients very differently than all purpose, so I would stick to the recipe as written for best results!
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I have tried many recipes but this the best banana recipe. I will give 100 out of 100 thank you for sharing this recipe
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Thank you, so glad to hear that!
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These are amazing!! I made a couple swaps – used whole wheat flour (replaced by weight, as I always bake with metric) and melted coconut oil and they were absolutely delicious. So hard to stop eating after one, this recipe is a keeper! Thank you!
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These muffins were good! They did turn out dense and not moist. I had followed the recipe completly and still had this issue. This is a good recipe but not very moist. I have seen way better and delicous recipes on eatwithclarity.
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That could be with how you are measuring the flour, the ripeness of your bananas, or the temperature of your oven. All ovens are different, some end up being higher than the temperature actually reads. I would try lowering your oven temp by about 25 degrees or simply baking for less time.
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What kind of oil did you use?
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I used refined avocado oil but any kind of oil will be fine!
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OMG! I just don’t know what else to say! These are amazing! Rich, chocolatey, flavorful! They taste just like the chocolate chip muffins I remember as a kid, but without all the calories and fat those had!! You would never believe that these aren’t loaded with calories and sugar. A great snack in the middle of the day that really holds! Will definitely be making these again and again!
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Perfect! So happy you enjoyed these, Jennifer!
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