Chocolate Chip Streusel Muffins
It’s time for dessert for breakfast with these domed, bakery style, chocolate chip streusel muffins. Filled with chocolate chips and covered with a crunchy, chocolatey streusel topping… plus, all the tips for baking jumbo-sized domed muffins in regular a regular size muffin tin!
It’s no secret that I love muffins. Most of the time, I like normal sized, fruit-filled muffins, perfectly appropriate for breakfast.
But sometimes… sometimes you want the dessert-for-breakfast muffin. The giant, domed, sugar-topped bakery style muffin. The kind of muffin you eat when you really want to treat yourself.
When you’re in the mood for that kind of muffin, you want chocolate chip streusel muffins.
Here’s the good news: these freeze beautifully. So you can make a whole batch, without the temptation to eat them all at once.
Or you can share them with your friends, which is what I did: both these chocolate chip streusel muffins and the glazed lemon poppy seed muffins I recently shared were made for a group of friends who all came up to Philly for a girls weekend before Brielle was born.
The muffin base for these is similar to the cranberry orange streusel muffins I shared back in January. Except instead of cranberry and orange… these muffins are all about the chocolate chips!
Regular sized chocolate chips in the muffins. Mini chocolate chips in the streusel. Yes, please!
Of course, one of the other requirements for dessert-for-breakfast, bakery style muffins is the jumbo size, right? But how many people actually have the jumbo muffin pans? (I don’t.)
Fret not, there are some great ways to make big, domed muffins using your regular muffin pan!
Tips for Bakery Style Domed Muffins
First up, a little of my favorite subject: kitchen chemistry! These muffins contain a high ratio of baking powder, a chemical leavener, to help provide the lift. But the true secret to getting big domed tops: steam!
Start the muffins at high temperature for the first five minutes for domed tops. This initial high temperature heats the liquid ingredients enough to form steam, which helps to boost the height of the muffins. The outside edges of the muffins, against the muffin pan, start to bake and set while the middle is still batter and continues to expand upwards.
Secondly, fill your muffin cups all the way to the top. These aren’t cupcakes where you want a flat surface for decorating. Fill those cups right up to the very top so the batter spills up and over, creating the classic domed muffin shape.
Third, skip the paper liners and grease the muffin tin well. Paper liners stick to the batter and hold the muffin down. We want our batter to slip and slide right up the edge of the muffin tin. Don’t forget to spray the top of the muffin pan well, so the domed part doesn’t stick when you try to turn out the muffins!
A big, beautiful domed top. A crunchy, chocolatey streusel topping. Rich, chocolate chip filled muffin base.
Whether you call them dessert-for-breakfast or a legitimate dessert, chocolate chip streusel muffins are perfect for pretty much any occasion. Bake sale? Overnight guests? Family brunch? Because you’re in the mood for a delicious muffin? Absolutely perfect.

Chocolate Chip Streusel Muffins
It’s time for dessert for breakfast with these domed, bakery style, chocolate chip streusel muffins.
Ingredients:
For the muffins:
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 eggs, room temperature
- 3/4 cup buttermilk, room temperature
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 4 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips
For the streusel topping:
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 4 tablespoons cold butter, cut into half-inch size pieces
- 1/2 cup miniature chocolate chips
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 425 °F. Spray the wells and top of a 12 cup muffin tin with non-stick cooking spray.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the vegetable oil, sugar, eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla. Slowly add in the flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Mix until just combined and no dry streaks of flour remain. Fold in the chocolate chips.
- Divide the batter between the 12 muffin cups, filling nearly to the top.
- To make the streusel, combine the sugar, flour, and butter in a small bowl. Using a pastry blender or fork, cut the butter into the dry ingredients until the streusel has the texture of clumpy, wet sand. Stir in the mini chocolate chips. Sprinkle the streusel evenly over the tops of the 12 muffins.
- Bake at 425°F for 5 minutes, then reduce the oven temp to 375°F (do not open the oven in between!) and bake for another 13-15 minutes. Cool muffins in the muffin tin for 10 minutes, then run a sharp knife under the edges of the muffin domes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
Muffins will stay fresh in an air-tight container at room temperature for up to 5 days, or in a freezer bag in the freezer for up to 3 months.
A Bunsen Burner Bakery Original Protocol
Hey Julie,
Love your blog and recipes. I recently discovered you by way of Pinterest.
Thank you for explaining the SCIENCE behind BAKING. My daughter is constantly experimenting with ideas she finds online, but the results are not always a WINNER. I will share your website so that she has a better understanding of the FORMULAS behind RECIPES.
Can this Beautiful Streusel Muffin be baked in a Muffin-Top pan. My regular pans were lost in the move!!! I also have the Mini-Muffin pans.
Hi Linn! I’ve never baked with muffin top pans, so I don’t have a definite answer. I always feel like it’s worth a shot, so I’d try it — just make sure to reduce the bake time since I’m guessing the muffin top pan holds a lot less batter than a full muffin tin. I love that your daughter is interested in the science behind baking; I have a few fun science and baking projects coming to the blog soon!
Wow the topping looks so delicious, love the sound of these!
I love muffins with streusel very much. These look ravishing. I love the sounds of chocolate chip. My kids will love this. Can’t wait to try this soon.
Breakfast will be so interesting with these delicious chocolate chip muffins! Adding buttermilk will give a nice fluff to these.Very delicious.
Oooh yes – I need these in my life! I, also, distinguish between “healthy” vs. “special occasion” muffins – if I’m ever walking into work with a Starbucks blueberry muffin, you know it’s been a really rough morning so far, haha! But with these, I could salvage the morning with my own baking, especially since I could stash them in the freezer! 🙂
So lovely. Thank you and enjoy the week end !
These look so BIG and tempting! Nothing wrong with a little sweet treat at breakfast occasionally! In fact, years ago I read that people that let themselves indulge just a little in the morning tend to make better food choices throughout the day! Totally sounds made up but I promise I read it!!lol!
This is awesome! These muffins will be a big hit with my chocolate loving daughter and husband. The crunchy strussel top is personally my favorite part.
Love muffins, love streussel, love chocolate chips. These sound amazing!!
Ooh! I want one of these for breakfast! That streusel topping looks great!
I love the giant muffins! And when I do get them, I tend to eat just the top 🙂 I would 100% do that with these muffins, so I could savor every bite of the streusel. These look absolutely fabulous
Yum, there’s nothing like a delicious and moist muffin hot from the oven. And with chocolate and streusel? Next level!
Oh my goodness, these look so delicious! I’m going to have to make them soon… my family’s going to devour them!
These muffins look amazing chocolate chips and strudel = yum