The boy is officially obsessed with mini cupcakes. It seems like every grocery store we go to has stacks of them lined up waiting for him in the bakery section. It’s nearly impossible for me to get through the store without a meltdown for “cakes!” Since this thing for “cakes!” thing doesn’t appear to be going away, I decided to make some mini pumpkin muffins today so I could at least control what went into them. I topped them off with some cream cheese frosting and I have to say, they are pretty darn good.
While I wouldn’t actually qualify these as healthy treats, it does have a good amount of pumpkin in it. That should count for something, right? I also cut the amount of sugar back in both the muffin and cream cheese frosting recipes and I really don’t think it is missed at all. I’ll keep you posted on his reaction to mini pumpkin muffins when he wakes up from nap time…[edited post-nap: T just woke up from his nap. When he walked downstairs and saw all the muffins, he said, “whoa, cakes!” He took a bite of one and proclaimed “hooray!” I’ll take that to be a good review of mini pumpkin muffins.]
- For mini pumpkin muffins:
- 1 cup canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix)
- ⅓ cup vegetable oil
- 2 large eggs
- ¾ cup sugar
- 1 and ½ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice (or alternatively use ½ tsp cinnamon, ¼ tsp ginger, ⅛ tsp ground cloves, and ⅛ tsp nutmeg)
- ½ tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp salt
- For cream cheese frosting:
- ¼ cup butter, softened
- 4 oz (in weight) reduced fat cream cheese (but not fat-free)
- ¾ cup powdered sugar
- ½ tsp vanilla
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a mini muffin tin with paper liners.
- Whisk together pumpkin, oil, eggs, and sugar in a large bowl. In a separate medium bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, pumpkin pie spice, baking soda, and salt. Add flour mixture to pumpkin mixture and whisk until combined.
- Divide batter among muffin cups. I made 24 mini muffins with this recipe and had a little batter leftover. I only have one mini muffin pan so I decided to make 3 large muffins with the leftover batter instead of making a second batch of 6-8 more mini muffins. Bake mini muffins for 18 minutes and large muffins for 25-30 minutes. Muffins are done with a toothpick inserted in the center of the muffin comes out clean.
- While the muffins are cooling, make the cream cheese frosting. Mix all ingredients on on high until soft and whipped. Spread onto muffins once cool or apply using a pastry bag with a frosting tip.
- Store in fridge since the frosting has cream cheese in it.
Source: Pumpkin muffin recipe adapted from smitten kitchen and Cream Cheese Frosting recipe adapted from The Pioneer Woman.
