Mint Chocolate Chip Oat Muffins (naturally colored, gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free option, vegan option)

Mint chocolate chip has been transformed into a healthy breakfast with these Mint Chocolate Chip Muffins. Naturally colored green, these muffins are a fun and healthy St. Patrick’s Day breakfast too!

Have you ever had a mint chocolate chip muffin before?

Talk about flavor bomb. When you say mint chocolate chip most people think of ice cream, but I like to eat breakfasts that taste like dessert so I was inspired to make Mint Chocolate Chip Muffins 🙂

I also wanted to make a green, healthy breakfast for my kids to enjoy this St. Patrick’s Day, and since I’ll already be making gluten-free Matcha Oatmeal White Chocolate Chip Cookies for dessert my breakfast couldn’t be green with the help of matcha this time. So… how did I get that beautiful, natural green hue?

By adding spinach into the batter!

I hope after reading that you just thought that I was borderline genius instead of borderline crazy 😉

No, I don’t normally blend vegetables up into my muffins… well, I did make gluten-free Chocolate Banana Oat Muffins with hidden veggies, and gluten-free Orange Carrot Oat Muffins… Okay, so I have a THING for putting veggies into my breakfasts!

When you eat baked goods for breakfast routinely (which I do, and LOVE!) in a grab-and-go situation you end up eating a daily meal without any veggies or fruits. So, yes, I like to add some veggies to my muffins sometimes for a healthier breakfaast. I hope you’re on board with it too!

The strong flavor of the mint extract entirely hides the spinach, so believe me when I say you don’t feel like you’re eating a salad muffin. Far from it – you’re eating a moist, mint muffin filled with pockets of chocolate chips that sing together.

My favorite part about these Mint Chocolate Chip Muffins: You can make them all in a food processor.

To start, preheat your oven to 350 and line a muffin tin with liners (green to be festive if you’d like!) or spray with non-stick spray.

In a food processor, add your spinach and blend till pureed. Next, add the rest of your wet ingredients: coconut oil, applesauce, mint extract. Lightly blend together until smooth. Add your eggs (or flax eggs) in and briefly blend again.

At this point you may smell the mint together with the pureed spinach and applesauce and maybe you’re really thinking that I’m crazy.

I’ll admit it, I was a little worried myself that I went overboard on the spinach. The smell of the spinach bakes out though! No salad muffins here 🙂

Now, add in your oat flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Again, briefly mix till all is well combined. Be careful not to over mix your muffin batter.

Remove your food processor bowl and fold your chocolate chips in by hand.

Scoop the batter into your muffin tin till each muffin cavity is about 2/3 way full. Bake in the oven for about 15-17 minutes, or till the tops are set and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

TIP: For the sake of ease and to ensure your baked goods turn out and aren’t a crumbly mess, I recommend buying oat flour for muffins. Unless you have a high powered blender and can get your oats blended up as fine as the oat flour you can buy in a store. For example, my blender does a great job blending up oats, but my food processor does not blend my oats up fine enough.

See how beautifully fluffy these Mint Chocolate Chip Muffins are?

Thanks to the food processor, these muffins get whipped into fluffy perfection!

I hope everyone has a fantastic St. Patrick’s Day this year (and any year to come!) and I hope you try this recipe and come back to tell me that these Mint Chocolate Chip Muffins are unbelievably tasty! 🙂

More healthy breakfast recipes that aren’t so green that I’d highly recommend are my gluten-free Cinnamon Applesauce Oat Bread or easy gluten-free, vegan Banana Pancakes (always a winner in our house!).