Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins (Paleo, Gluten Free)

Craving tasty and healthy pumpkin chocolate chip muffins that also happen to be paleo and gluten-free? These honey-sweetened almond flour pumpkin muffins can be made ahead and kept in the freezer so you can easily heat one up when pumpkin spice blend season hits!

Moist pumpkin chocolate chip muffins (hey—“moist” as an adjective isn’t cringey when it’s the desired texture for food) are perfect for fall weather or whenever you want to transport yourself to that cozy autumnal time of year.

Similar to my other pumpkin-y paleo desserts, this one’s super-easy to make—and you won’t even need to source any hard to find ingredients.

Useful Baking Tips!

Seasoned bakers and pastry chefs always recommend that folks use a kitchen scale to measure ingredients when making baked goods because there can be up to a 20% difference in the amount of flour depending on how it is measured. And let’s face it: baking requires increased accuracy because small changes in volume can result in suboptimal treats.

Use a kitchen scale

For all of my baking recipes where precision in calculating ingredient amounts is critical, I always add metric measurements so you can weigh each component on a kitchen scale for consistency. Need another reason to use a kitchen scale? Cleanup is faster because you won’t mess up a bunch of measuring cups and spoons. Just tare (or zero out) the scale in between measuring ingredients. I use this kitchen scale to make everything from these pumpkin chocolate chip muffins to paleo potstickers!

Work quickly

As soon as the dry and wet ingredients are combined in this pumpkin chocolate chip muffin recipe, you must work quickly because the baking soda has been activated. If you dawdle, your muffins won’t rise as well in the oven!

What are some paleo-friendly chocolate chip brands?

These days, you can find paleo-approved (i.e., dairy-free, refined sugar-free, junk free) chocolate chips or bars pretty easily online or at the grocery store. Some brands I like include Hu Gems, Guittard Mindful Choices, and Eating Evolved. But here’s a dirty little secret: I don’t always use paleo chocolate in my recipes—I just choose a dark chocolate bar or chips (70% cacao or higher to keep the sugar level low) that I like to eat!

Can you substitute other ingredients?

Not to sound like a broken record player or anything, but once again, I’m no paleo baking expert, so I DON’T KNOW. I’m not sure if you can use an egg substitute or use another flour in place of almond flour in this pumpkin chocolate chip muffin recipe because I haven’t tried out all the different possible permutations. But if you have success with any ingredient substitutions, please let us all know in the comments section below!

How do you store and reheat pumpkin chocolate chip muffins?

You can freeze any pumpkin chocolate chip muffins that aren’t gobbled up right out of the oven. Store the muffins in a food-safe freezer bag or airtight container for up to 4 months. When you want to eat a muffin, you can thaw it overnight in the fridge or microwave it for 30 seconds straight from the freezer. If you want to use a toaster oven to heat up a muffin, I would still thaw it first and then bake at 300°F for ~5 minutes or until heated through.

Love Pumpkin Recipes?

I have a few more fall-inspired paleo dessert recipes to use up your leftover canned pumpkin purée:

• Pumpkin Carrot Muffins
• Pumpkin Muffins
• Pumpkin, Coconut, and Maple Custard Cups

Let’s bake pumpkin chocolate chip muffins!

Serves 12

Ingredients:

• 2½ cups (280 g) finely ground almond flour
• 2 teaspoons pumpkin spice blend
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon cream of tartar or 1 teaspoon lemon juice (added to wet ingredients)
• ¼ teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt
• 1 cup (245 g) canned pumpkin purée
• ½ cup (169.5 g) honey
• 4 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup (180 grams) dark chocolate chips

Equipment

• All my favorite tools are listed here.

Method:

Heat oven to 350ºF with the rack in the middle. Line a muffin tin with parchment muffin liners or grease it well with ghee or coconut oil.

Combine the dry ingredients in a medium bowl: almond flour, pumpkin spice blend, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt.

Whisk the dry ingredients until uniform and set aside.

In a separate large bowl, add the pumpkin purée, honey, eggs, and vanilla. (If you’re using lemon juice in place of cream of tartar, add it to this bowl.)

Use a hand mixer or whisk to blend everything together.

Here’s where you have to work quickly! Add the dry ingredients to the bowl of wet ingredients…

…and mix until well combined.

Manually fold in the chocolate chips.

Divide the batter evenly into each muffin liner with a large ice cream scoop.

If you’re feeling extra, dot the top with a few bonus chocolate chips so folks know what’s inside.

Don’t dawdle because the baking soda has already been activated at this point and the muffins need to get in the oven!

Bake the muffins in the oven at 350°F for 25 to 30 minutes, rotating the muffin tray at the halfway mark.

The muffins are done cooking when the tops are golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.

Remove the muffins from the oven and transfer the muffins to a wire cooling rack to cool.

Chow down and freeze the leftovers!

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Looking for more recipe ideas? Head on over to my Recipe Index. You’ll also find exclusive recipes on my iPhone and iPad app, and in my cookbooks, Nom Nom Paleo: Food for Humans (Andrews McMeel Publishing 2013), Ready or Not! (Andrews McMeel Publishing 2017), and Nom Nom Paleo: Let’s Go! (Andrews McMeel Publishing 2021).

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