Chocolate Beet Muffins

We’re all pretty familiar with chocolate cake with hidden vegetables, but not zucchini this time – beets are a little more mysterious. I guarantee that all but the very pickiest of eaters won’t notice any hidden vegetables, especially since beets do hide a bit better than zucchini does.

Despite being made with whole grain spelt flour and a pile of veggies, these are definitely chocolate muffins and they don’t taste nearly as healthy as they are. The chocolate chunks help, but we all know dark chocolate is good for you, right?

If you have a sad lonely beet sitting in the fridge, shred it up and make these chocolate beet muffins, then feed the muffins to your children and laugh at fooling them into eating beets. They’ll just see chocolate on top of more chocolate and never think to look for sneaky vegetables.

Ingredients

Scroll to the bottom of the post or click “skip to recipe” above to see the recipe card with full ingredient measurements and instructions.

Method

Preheat the oven to 190C (375F) and grease or line a standard 12-cup muffin tin.

Add the flour, cocoa powder, coconut sugar, baking powder, baking soda, vanilla powder, and salt to a large bowl. Whisk to combine. Stir in the chocolate chunks.

In a smaller bowl, whisk together the milk and coconut oil until combined. Mix in the grated beet (it will turn bright pink).

Add the beet mixture to the large bowl and use a wooden spoon or spatula to mix until just combined.

Measure approximately equal amounts of the batter into each muffin cup of the prepared tin, filling about three-quarters full. Top the muffins with the extra chocolate pieces.

Bake for 20-22 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre of a muffin comes out clean. Cool the muffins for ten minutes before removing and cooling fully on a rack.

Tips and Notes

Don’t worry about peeling the beets, especially if they’re organic. The skin won’t be noticeable in the final product and it’s a bit of a time saver. This isn’t the case if you use a very large, older beet – in that case, especially if the skin is very thick, you may want to peel it.

Although dark and natural cocoa can be used interchangeably (see below), I recommend using dark for the best colour and flavour. This can be Dutch process or regular (they aren’t usually demarcated here in Holland anyway) as both baking powder and soda are used in the recipe.

There are a couple of things that will be different here for European and North American readers. I use vanilla powder and chocolate drops because extract and chips are prohibitively expensive, but note that extract can be used and in what amount in the recipe card. Chocolate chips or chunks are listed in the recipe card for the same reason.

These must be made with raw beetroot, not the type that comes pre-cooked, or any that you’ve baked/steamed/roasted. I have no idea how mashed cooked beets would do here and I don’t know the quantities in which they should be used.

If the milk is cold when the coconut oil is stirred in, the oil will solidify very quickly. You whisk it in to reduce the size of the pieces – to prevent this further, use room temperature oat milk.

Substitutions

Use any kind of cocoa you have on hand. Raw cacao can be used, but it will make for a slightly bitter muffin, and is rather more expensive than regular cocoa powder. Don’t mix up baking cocoa, which is pure cocoa, with cocoa mix for drinking – if there are added ingredients like sugar, milk powder, etc., it’s not for baking.

Light spelt flour, regular whole wheat flour, or white flour can all be substituted for the whole spelt in this recipe. I haven’t tried making these gluten-free.

Any kind of oil can be substituted for the coconut oil, but will change the texture slightly. I most often use olive oil as a sub but an oil that is liquid at room temperature will reduce the denser, hearty texture of the muffins slightly. If you prefer a lighter, slightly crumbly muffin, use a liquid oil.

Chopped dark chocolate can be used in the place of the chocolate chips/chunks, but note that regular chocolate will likely burn while baking. If you use a bar of chocolate, you may want to exclude it from topping the muffins as a result. This doesn’t apply if you’re using the baking chocolate in bar form. I top with chopped baking chocolate but mix chocolate drops into the muffins.

More Beet Recipes

Winter Salad with Beets, Orange, and Pomegranate
Beet Tart
Vegetarian Borscht
Pumpkin Salad
Double Chocolate Beetroot Cake

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This post was originally published in March 2017. It has been updated with changes to the text and new step-by-step photos as of January 2020, with no changes to the recipe.