Chocolate Chip Cupcakes
These homemade Chocolate Chip Cupcakes are moist and delicious wonderful flavor from chocolate chips, brown sugar, vanilla, and a touch of cinnamon.
If you love chocolate chip cookies, these cupcakes have the same delicious combination of flavors!
Over the years, we've made a scratch chocolate chip cake, an easy chocolate chip cake from cake mix as well as chocolate chip pound cake. We're happy to have a cupcake version to share with you!
Table of Contents
Why we Love It
There are so many reasons to love this chocolate chip cupcake recipe! Here are just a few:
- Moist, tender crumb
- Delicious chocolate chip cookie flavor
- Perfect for birthday parties and other special occasions
- Chocolate chips make everything better, as with our cherry chocolate chip cake, mint chocolate chip cake, banana chocolate chip cake, and more!
- Cupcakes are such a convenient grab and go dessert!
Ingredients for Chocolate Chip Cupcakes
You can find the full, printable ingredient list and instructions for the cupcakes as well as the chocolate frosting at the bottom of this post. Here is a quick look at some of the star ingredients.
Cake Flour has a lower protein content which means less gluten is formed in the cake batter. This results in a softer, more tender crumb.
Light Brown Sugar not only adds a familiar "chocolate chip cookie flavor" to the cupcakes, but it also adds moisture thanks to its molasses content.
Mini Chocolate Chips: We prefer mini chocolate chips over regular chocolate chips because they are lightweight and less likely to sink!
Ground Cinnamon in this recipe just gives just a hint of spiced flavor.
Sour Cream adds richness to the cake as well as additional moisture, without thinning the cake batter. Some of our favorite cakes contain sour cream, including chocolate sour cream cake, easy brownie cake, and lemon blueberry pound cake.
How to Make Chocolate Chip Cupcakes
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Place cupcake liners into cupcake pans.
- In a separate bowl combine the cake flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Whisk 30 seconds to blend. Set aside.
- In another bowl combine the sour cream, vanilla extract, vegetable oil, and milk. Stir and set aside.
- Add the softened, unsalted butter to mixing bowl and mix on low to medium speed until smooth.
- Slowly add the white and brown sugar mixing on medium speed until the mixture has lightened in color and is fluffy- Approximately 3 minutes.
- Next, add the room temperature eggs one at a time, mixing after each each addition until yolk is blended.
- With the mixer on low speed, add the dry ingredients alternately with the wet ingredients beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Stop and scrape down the sides of bowl once or twice as need. After the last addition of dry ingredients, mix just until blended.
- Fold in the mini Chocolate Chips.
- Add the cupcake batter to the cupcake pans (prepared with liners). Each cupcake will have approximately ¼ cup batter.
- Bake for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick can be inserted and removed with no crumbs or just a few moist crumbs attached.
Chocolate Buttercream
We frosted our cupcakes with an easy and delicious chocolate buttercream frosting! This buttercream is made with softened butter, unsweetened cocoa powder, confectioners sugar, a pinch of salt, and a bit of vanilla extract and milk.
It is so creamy, delicious, and pipes perfectly!
Decorating the Chocolate Chip Cupcakes
Once the cupcakes have cooled completely, it is time to frost! We frosted ours with simple swirls from a 1M (large star) piping tip. (See our tutorial on the Basics of Cupcake Decorating or the Basics of Star Tip Piping for more details!)
You could leave the frosted cupcakes just as they are, but we decided to top them with mini chocolate chips. (We used mini Chips Ahoy cookies).
Recipe FAQs
More Chocolate Chip Cakes
We have many more chocolate chip cakes to share with you!
We have listed some in this post already, but here are a few more popular options: Cannoli Cake, Cherry Chocolate Chip Pound Cake, Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Pound Cake, and more!
Thanks so much for stopping by! We hope that you enjoy this recipe for chocolate chip cupcakes.
Don't miss our full collection of Cake Recipes (including cupcake recipes)! We have so many to share--both for cake recipes from scratch as well as doctored cake mix recipes!
If you are interested in cake decorating tutorials, we have hundreds of techniques to share with you in our Cake Decorating section!
You'll find everything from How to Frost a Cake to elegant cake designs, baby shower cakes, and themed birthday cake design ideas!
Have you made this? We would LOVE for you to leave a ⭐️ rating as well as a comment and photo below! We really appreciate your feedback!
Chocolate Chip Cupcakes
Ingredients
- 1 ½ sticks (170g) unsalted butter, softened (Should still hold its shape but dent when pressed.)
- 1 cup (200g) white granulated sugar
- 1 cup (200g) Light Brown Sugar (If not using a digital scale, make sure to pack the brown sugar into your measuring cup for most accurate measurement.)
- 3 large eggs, room temperature (If you are in a hurry, place the eggs in a bowl of warm water for 5 minutes.)
- 3 cups (342g) cake flour (If not using a digital scale, lightly spoon into measuring cups and level with knife for most accurate measurement.)
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon (3g)
- 1 Tablespoon (12g) baking powder
- ½ teaspoon (3g) salt
- 1 cup (242g) sour cream (We use "full fat" rather than reduced.)
- 2 teaspoons (8g) vanilla extract
- ½ cup (121g milk) (We use whole or 2 percent milk.)
- ⅓ cup (68g) vegetable oil (We use canola oil.)
- 1 cup (170g) mini chocolate chips (adjust amount to your liking)
Chocolate Buttercream Frosting
- 2 sticks 226g total unsalted butter, softened (Do not microwave)
- 6 cups 690g powdered sugar
- ¾ cup 70g unsweetened cocoa (measure then sift)
- ⅓ -½ cup 72g milk (adjust amount for desired consistency)
- 2 teaspoons 8g vanilla extract 8 grams
- ½ teaspoon 3g salt
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Place cupcake liners into cupcake pans.
- In a separate bowl combine the cake flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Whisk 30 seconds to blend. Set aside.
- In another bowl combine the sour cream, vanilla extract, vegetable oil, and milk. Stir and set aside.
- Add butter to mixing bowl and mix on low to medium speed until smooth.
- Slowly add the white and brown sugar mixing on MEDIUM speed until the mixture has lightened in color and is fluffy- Approximately 3 minutes.
- Next, add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each each addition until yolk is blended.
- With the mixer on low speed, add the dry ingredients alternately with the wet ingredients beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Stop and scrape down the sides of bowl once or twice as need. After the last addition of dry ingredients, mix just until blended.
- Fold in the mini chocolate chips.
- Add the cupcake batter to the cupcake pans (prepared with liners). Each cupcake will have approximately ¼ cup batter. Bake for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick can be inserted and removed with no crumbs or just a few moist crumbs attached.
- Makes approximately 7.5-8 cups of batter- enough for 28-30 cupcakes.
For the Chocolate Buttercream
- Add butter and mix on low to medium speed until smooth. Add vanilla and blend into the butter.
- Add powdered sugar, salt, and cocoa powder.
- Add most of the milk and mix on low speed, increasing to medium as the ingredients become incorporated.
- Continue to mix adding remaining milk as needed. It may take 3-5 minutes to reach the smoothness and consistency you like. It will take longer if using a hand mixer. As you mix, the frosting will become very smooth. You can add additional milk (1 Tablespoon at a time) if the frosting is too thick or additional powdered sugar if too soft.
Decorating the Cupcakes
- Once the cupcakes have completely cooled, you can frost the cupcakes. We used a 1M (large star) piping tip to add swirls of frosting, and topped with a mini chocolate chip cookie (Chips Ahoy)
They sound and look awesome! Love the addition of cinnamon :-) Incredible as always! :-)