Healthy Vegan, Flourless, & Refined Sugar Free Chocolate Chip Breakfast Mini-Muffins

Vegan, flourless, free of refined sugars, and adorably mini, these healthy vegan breakfast muffins make the perfect treat for breakfast, or to put in a lunch box as a healthy mid-day snack!

At some point in my early baking endeavors, I became obsessed with the idea of creating a chocolate chip muffin using healthier ingredients, but making sure they tasted truly decadent.  Not even like “regular muffins but you can’t believe they are healthy!!”, I truly wanted them to stand out and be delicious and have a taste totally unto themselves.  These muffins were my white whale.

But, 90834095 mini-muffins later, here we are!  These muffins are made with oat flour AND almond flour, since personally I am not a huge fan of just oat flour on its own.  They are sweetened with coconut sugar, and SUPER moist thanks to the delicious healthy fat of melted coconut oil, plus a bit of applesauce and non-dairy milk.  Toss in a handful of semi-sweet mini chocolate chips and sprinkle some over the top as well, and you’ve got yourself quite a treat!

My initial thought when making these was how great they’d be to put in a kid’s lunchbox.  They get a chocolate chip snack, but you know it’s actually homemade and healthy and plus you can make 2-dozen on Sunday and have them last all week.  But then after I ate 7435489 of them myself, I realized they’re a pretty darn good adult snack, too.

How To Make Them

These little healthy vegan breakfast muffins are EASY, but do take a bunch of ingredients.  Thankfully each batch makes 24, so you’re set for a little while once they’re done!

Start by prepping the two wet ingredients that need an extra few minutes – melt the coconut oil (make sure you measure it out once it’s melted using liquid measuring cups!), make the vegan buttermilk.  Haven’t made vegan buttermilk before?  It’s so easy!  Basically you use non-dairy milk and mix it with a bit of apple cider vinegar, white vinegar, or lemon juice, and let it sit for a few minutes to curdle.  This gives it a thicker texture and keeps the end result extra moist and well formed.  Soy milk curdles slightly better than other non-dairy milks, but I promise you that whichever one you have on hand will work beautifully.

While the oil is cooling and the buttermilk is curdling, time to mix together the dry ingredients in a bowl.  VERY IMPORTANT – make sure you measure both flours using the spoon & level method!!  Hopefully you do this for all flour usage, but I know it’s easy to forget about doing this when it’s not regular GF or all-purpose flour.  It’s still vital here, since the measurements are pretty precise.  Just spoon the flour into the measuring cup, then level off the top with a spoon.  Don’t scoop from the bag.  That’s all!

Mix it up!

Anyway, mix together the oat flour, almond flour, coconut sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt.  The cinnamon is optional, but the final result doesn’t taste cinnamon-y, there is just a delightful extra punch of flavor you can’t place.  Once the dry ingredients are mixed, add in the buttermilk, melted coconut oil, unsweetened applesauce, and vanilla extract.  Once the batter is mixed, add in the mini-chocolate chips, and make sure you have some extras to put over the tops!

The batter will be a bit different than you’re used to with muffin batter.  Sort of like if you mixed cookie dough with cupcake batter or something.  Or maybe that’s a terrible way to describe it.  Here just, see for yourself. 

Two strong recommendations:

1-I recommend using mini-muffin cupcake liners here versus just greasing the pan and putting the batter directly in.  If you do that it will still work, but these are pretty delicate, and you run the risk of popping the top off when you try to remove them later on, versus the muffin coming cleanly out.

2-smooth the tops a bit before sprinkling on the extra chocolate chips.  Regular GF or all-purpose flour likes to puff up and spread out in a forgiving way.  Oat flour likes to puff up in an unforgiving way, and you may wind up with some lumpy topped muffins!  Which honestly I don’t mind, I tell myself they need to be eaten first then eat them all at once.

These work perfectly at 14 minutes, but adjust accordingly if you know your oven runs hot or cold.  Once they’re out, make sure to let them stay in the pan for about 15 minutes before removing, or even let them cool entirely in the pan if you want (or if you forget to move them to a cooling rack).  Then it’s time to eat your healthy vegan breakfast muffins!

Nutritional info can be found below in the Notes section below the recipe instructions.

Storage:

After they have cooled, seal in an air-tight container and store at room temperature.  They will stay good around 5 days.

Pro Tips & Tools:

• Make sure you are measuring your flours using the spoon and level method.  Do NOT scoop directly from the container, as you will wind up with too much.
• Make sure you measure your liquid ingredients using liquid measuring cups.  This will ensure accuracy!  I love this set, and the large one will also serve as a tool to help pour the batter into the donut tin holes.
• Missing any of the basics? Here is my go-to mini-muffin tin, and my go-to mini-muffin cupcake liners.
• Aren’t these mini-chips the cutest? These are the ones I use!

Ingredients Needed:

• Oat flour – here is my go-to gluten free oat flour, or if you do not have any oat flour on hand, you can also finely grind up rolled oats into your own oat flour
• Almond flour – make sure it’s almond flour, not almond meal!
• Coconut sugar
• Baking powder – I recommend using baking powder that has no added aluminum. This one is my go-to.
• Baking soda
• Cinnamon – optional, but recommended
• Salt
• Non-dairy milk – I usually use soy, but any will do
• Vinegar – apple cider vinegar, white vinegar, or lemon juice to curdle the non-dairy milk
• Coconut oil
• Unsweetened applesauce
• Vanilla extract
• Mini-chocolate chips – these are my personal favorites

What To Bake Next:

• Want more treats that are a bit on the healthier side? Try these Vegan Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, or these Vegan Toasted Coconut Macaroons, or these Vegan Peanut Butter & Banana Muffins.
• Obsessing over these cutie mini-chips? I suggest adding them to these Vegan Double Chocolate Muffins, or this Vegan Marbled Banana Bread, or this Vegan Chocolate Zucchini Bread.
• Okay fine some more chocolate chip stuff, but now cookies! Try these Vegan Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies, or these Vegan Fluffy Banana Bread Cookies, or these No Chill Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies.