Giant Costco Copycat Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Muffins

The saga continues!! For those of you just joining, we’ve been at this Costco-Copycat muffin thing for a while now, and have spun up five other delicious recipes that hit the SPOT for those of us who have been missing those quintessential Costco muffins ever since going gluten free. For me, it’s been a solid 17 years since I last got to snag a tray of those bigger-than-your-face and unbelievably fluffy muffins, but I can now rest easy knowing I can make them at home whenever I want! (perhaps more dangerous than having to make the trip to Costco to get them!). So far we’ve got: giant banana nut muffins, giant poppyseed muffins, giant double chocolate muffins, giant blueberry muffins, and giant apple streusel muffins – and now these giant gluten free chocolate chip muffins! They’re quite a set, so if you have a free weekend and are looking to impress your neighbors, family, friends, or just yourself, I highly recommend making ALL of them. Heck! You could make all six types and put them on your own sort of Costco-esque tray and give them away as gifts! I, for one, would be THRILLED to receive that platter of deliciousness.

Tips for Fantastic Giant Muffins

A few tips for getting these to turn out just like you remember those Costco muffins:

• Use the right-size of pan! Apparently, Costco keeps their giant muffin pans as a trade secret because we can’t find them ANYWHERE on the internet and you can find EVERYTHING on the internet. Bravo, Costco, for a secret well-kept. However, we’ve found a way to crack the code and gone ahead and just used these brilliant 4-inch cake pans because, after careful inspection, we’ve discovered that Costco muffins are exactly 4-inches in diameter! HA! Take that, Costco-bakery-lords. I never thought I’d be regularly using 4-inch cake pans but here we are. I’ll just need to make a bunch of tiny cake recipes next!

• Let your batter REST, per the recipe, for at least 30 minutes. For two reasons: 1) the batter thickens as it rests which you want especially with a boatload of chocolate chips floating around in there that you want to keep from sinking to the bottom – a thicker batter will help suspend those morsels all throughout your muffins, ensuring every bite has the perfect ratio of fluffy muffin to chip; and 2) something somewhere said that baking powder needs a bit more time to “activate.” Don’t quote me on this, who knows if it’s actually true (I could probably just google it but that would just take the mystery out of baking!).

• Use a good 1-1 gluten free flour mix! We use the Bob’s Red Mill one (the baking mix), though we’ve heard good things about Cup-4-Cup. We’ve only tested this recipe with this one so if you want them to turn out exactly like ours, we recommend snagging a bag of that specific 1-1 gluten free flour.

• Do NOT open the oven door during baking time. Tape it shut if you have to! You can certainly turn on the oven light and peek and the gloriousness that is a set of rising muffins nearly-ready to be devoured, but do not open that door! Opening the door will immediately lower the oven temp and prohibit your muffins from rising correctly. If you’re in the last few minutes of baking and need to test to see if they’re done, open the oven just a tiny bit and reach in and just tap the top of one – if it springs back it’s done, if it presses in like a foam mattress topper, it’s not and needs a couple more minutes!

That’s all folks! Thanks for coming to our muffin Ted Talk. In all seriousness, though, these muffins (and all the other Costco copycat ones) are a dream come true for a girl with Celiac who’s been craving these since the 6th grade when all of the perfect, fluffy, flaky, crusty glutenous foods of the world became enemy #1. Here’s to finally rediscovering those childhood favorites, gluten free!

Print Recipe

5 from 1 vote

Giant Gluten Free Costco Copycat Chocolate Chip Muffins

These massive bakery-style chocolate chip muffins are fluffy and so dang easy!

Prep Time45 minutes mins

Cook Time35 minutes mins

Resting time30 minutes mins

Course: Breakfast, Dessert, Snack

Cuisine: American

Diet: Gluten Free

Keyword: breakfast, browned butter, chocolate chip, costco muffins, easy, giant, muffins

Servings: 6 giant muffins

Calories: 450kcal

Author: Amelia Farber

Equipment

• Six 4-inch cake pans (link below)
• Small saucepan

Ingredients

• 4 large eggs
• 1 1/4 Cup white sugar
• 1/2 Cup canola oil
• 2/3 Cup salted butter browned – instructions below
• 1 Cup milk
• 1/2 Cup sour cream
• 2 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp almond extract
• 2 Cups gluten free 1-1 flour mix with xanthan gum added (if it doesn't have xanthan gum, add 1 teaspoon xanthan gum)
• 1/2 Cup sweet rice flour
• 1/4 Cup arrowroot or tapioca starch
• 2 3/4 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 Cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Instructions

• First, make your browned butter! In a small saucepan over medium-low heat, melt the 2/3 cup of salted butter and stir constantly until melted and simmering. Continue to simmer, on medium heat, for at least a few minutes, until the popping and hissing sounds have completely subsided (this is the water in the butter burning off – you’ll know once it’s silent). Continue to cook, stirring constantly, until the butter reaches a deep amber color and smells nutty or caramelly. The butter may foam, so keep stirring/lifting up spoonfuls of the butter to see the color. The browned milk solids will foam up in the center of the pan – once it does that- immediately take off the burner and let sit for a few minutes, then pour (scrape ALL of the brown bits – that's the flavor!) into a heat-proof small bowl and let it cool to just above room temp (but not solid).
• Once your browned butter is cooled but still liquid, make your muffin batter! It will need to rest for 30 minutes before baking. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, oil, melted cooled browned butter (you'll end up with about 1/2 cup of browned butter), sour cream, milk, and vanilla and almond extracts. Then, in a medium bowl, whisk together the gluten free 1-1 flour mix, sweet rice flour, arrowroot starch, baking powder, salt, and 1 1/4 Cup of the chocolate chips (save the rest for sprinkling on top), then dump dry ingredients into the wet bowl and whisk until fully combined. Let the batter sit at room temp for 30 minutes.
• Finally, preheat the oven to 425° Fahrenheit and place your six 4-inch cake pans on a cookie sheet. Spray each pan with cooking spray, then spoon batter into each one evenly (they should be about 2/3-3/4 full) and sprinkle the leftover chocolate chips on top of each one. Bake for 5 minutes at 425 then immediately lower the temp to 350° F (do NOT open the oven door!) and let bake for 25-30 more minutes until the tops spring back with touched. Let cool nearly-completely before turning out and eating!

Tag @sisterssansgluten on Instagram if you snap a photo of your muffins!

Food photography and styling by Amelia Farber