Pumpkin Spice Muffins

Our first entry on Pumpkin Palooza is an EASY recipe.  I originally published this as part of a Pinterest Challenge and I ended up using several different cake mixes.  I would recommend spice cake for best taste.

Start with a box cake mix and a 15 ounce can of pumpkin.  You add - NOTHING!  That's right, two ingredients.  No eggs, oil, water or vanilla extract - NADA!

There must be more ingredients.  The result is probably dry.  The whole thing will taste like pumpkin.  NOPE.  You can use any kind of cake mix you want.  I wanted to make a bunch of cupcake/muffins, so I tried spice, yellow and devil's food cake mixes.  (I understand these are considered fairly healthy and even have a Weight Watcher point value somewhere.)

Just mix the pumpkin and the cake mix with an electric beater

Spoon into muffin/cupcake tins lined with cupcake papers, and after 23 minutes at 350 degrees, you get this for the spice muffins:

As for taste - excellent!  The pumpkin taste comes through in the spice muffins, but hardly at all with the yellow and devil's food cake mixes.  For an even more flavorful spice version, try adding a little cinnamon or a dash of nutmeg or allspice to the mix.  Chocolate chips are an awesome addition to the chocolate cupcakes/muffins.  The spice or yellow cake muffins are great topped with cream cheese frosting and you can try drizzling warm frosting over the muffins for a fancier look.  A note - I keep referring to these as muffins/cupcakes because the consistency is a cross between both.  It's not a cake, but a very moist muffin.  The best part for me was that they were so quick and easy to make, and the yield is about 18 cupcake/muffins.

Success!  Pumpkin Palooza is on!

cindy