Chocolate Sourdough Zucchini Muffins

Rich Chocolate Sourdough Zucchini Muffins are this chocolate lover’s new favorite muffin! Filled with shredded zucchini – no wringing out required for this recipe – and sourdough discard, these muffins are moist and delicious, just like my chocolate sourdough cupcakes and sourdough zucchini cake. My kids can’t get enough of them and I’m happy to use up my summer zucchini in such a yummy way. Win win!

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Why You’ll Love Chocolate Sourdough Zucchini Muffins

• Moist and tender: The zucchini in these muffins give them the most perfect texture, just like my Double Chocolate Sourdough Muffins!
• Full of zucchini: You’ll love how these muffins have so much healthy zucchini in them, but they taste like chocolate—delicious flavor with healthy veggie balance. Or try my Spinach Sourdough Banana Muffins for another veggie-packed option!
• Easy: These chocolate sourdough zucchini muffins are quick and easy to whip together – just like my Sourdough Zucchini Muffins, they only take a few minutes to whisk together.

Important Ingredients

• Sourdough Discard  – These muffins use about 1/2 cup or 100 grams of sourdough discard. I use discard where the starter has been fed equal weights of flour and water (100% hydration). The older the discard, the more sour tang will be prevalent in these muffins. If you don’t want any sour flavor, use a fresher discard.
• Unsalted Butter – I always use unsalted butter in baking because I can control the salt content in my recipe. These muffins use melted unsalted butter in the batter.
• Vegetable Oil – The combination of butter and oil adds flavor and incredible texture to these muffins.
• Sugar – White granulated sugar provides the sweetness in these muffins.
• Egg – One large egg brings richness, a good texture, and helps muffins rise.
• Milk – 2% or whole milk works best.
• Vanilla Extract – Vanilla extract enhances the sweet flavor of these muffins.
• All-purpose flour – I use all-purpose flour or a pastry flour with a lower protein content in these muffins.
• Cocoa Powder – I like using a good quality dutched cocoa powder.
• Baking Soda & Powder – A combination of these two make these muffins rise.
• Salt – Salt is important in balancing the flavors.
• Zucchini – Zucchini keeps these muffins moist and tender. You don’t need to squeeze and drain the zucchini for this recipe, but you can if you want to. The zucchini does need to be shredded.
• Chocolate Chips – Add chocolate chips for some extra chocolaty flavor.

How to Make Chocolate Sourdough Zucchini Muffins

Prepare Batter

Begin preparing the batter for these chocolate zucchini muffins by combining the wet ingredients in a small bowl. Add sourdough discard, melted butter, vegetable oil and sugar. Be careful that your melted butter isn’t too hot. Whisk together until combined. Add the egg, milk and vanilla extract and whisk again until smooth. Set aside.

Next, combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Whisk together to combined. Set aside.

Add Zucchini and Mix

Prepare your zucchini by washing and chopping off the ends. Use a box grater to shred the zucchini on the fine setting. You want your zucchini to be finely shredded. For this recipe, you don’t need to drain the excess water from the zucchini before using it.

Pour the liquid ingredients on top of the dry ingredients. Gently stir until partially combined. Add the shredded zucchini and chocolate chunks. Stir until just combined. It’s okay if there are a few dry streaks in your sourdough discard zucchini muffin batter.

Bake the Muffins

Prepare your muffin tins by placing parchment liners or muffin liners into a 12 cup muffin tin. I really love these USA Bakeware muffin tins. You can also spray the muffin pan with baking spray if you don’t have or don’t want to use liners.

Scoop about 1/3 cup of batter evenly into parchment-lined muffin tins. You will end up with about 12 muffins.

Bake for 5 minutes at 425ºF. After 5 minutes reduce the temperature to 350ºF. Bake for 12-15 minutes. Check to see if your chocolate zucchini sourdough muffins are ready by inserting a toothpick into the center of the muffins. If it comes out clean with no streaks of batter, they are ready. You may see streaks of chocolate – that’s okay. If it has streaks of wet batter, continue baking and check again after a few minutes.

Let muffins cool for about 5 minutes in the pan and then remove to a cooling rack.

Substitutions

• Sourdough Starter: Substitute ripe, bubbly active sourdough starter in place of the discard if you want.
• Vegetable Oil: Any neutral flavored oil can be substituted for the vegetable oil in the recipe, or use all butter.
• Semi-Sweet Chocolate: Replace with any favorite chocolate – milk, dark or even chocolate chunks work.

Sourdough Muffin Recipes

If you tried these Chocolate Sourdough Zucchini Muffins or any other recipe on my website leave a 🌟 star rating and let me know how it went in the comments below. Happy Baking!