Pumpkin Spice Muffins with Streusal (You’re not going to believe what the ingredients are!)

Sun, 10/12/08 – 9:03 PM | 21 Comments

Any southerner worth their salt has a great chili recipe, preferably a signature one. This is why I set out several years back trying out this one and that, tweaking and adding until I came …

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Pumpkin Spice Muffins with Streusal (You’re not going to believe what the ingredients are!)

Submitted by southernplate on Friday, November 14, 200818 Comments

I don’t know if pumpkin is a southern thing. You always hear of pumpkin pie on Southern tables at Thanksgiving and such, but no one in my family has ever made a pumpkin pie to my knowledge. I had never tasted anything at all with pumpkin until about three years ago. While on a quilting retreat, we were served these delicious spice muffins and I just had to have the recipe. Imagine my surprise (and Mama’s) when we found out they were pumpkin!

You see, Mama had always claimed to dislike anything pumpkin. She had tried pumpkin pie as a child and whenever we asked about it she would just shake her head and say “Its kind of slimy, trust me, you wouldn’t like it”. Of course, we took her word for it, and each one of us grew up to be avowed pumpkin dislikers as well. You know, I’m pretty sure “disliker” is not a word but it makes perfect sense in that sentence, doesn’t it? See, the English language just needs to keep up with me and we’ll all be better off.

Anyway, as it turns out, Mama must have gotten a hold of a bad piece of pumpkin pie as a child because we have both broadened our horizons with regards to pumpkin since that muffin incident and it is now a regular part in our holiday baking, as well as year round baking thanks to these muffins.

No, these aren’t the ones we had on retreat. They are actually better except for one thing - those on the retreat were baked for us, you have to bake these yourself. Everything tastes better when someone else cooks it for you!

A neighbor of a friend gave me this recipe when I was telling her about the muffins. She was of the Northern persuasion and, thinking pumpkin was a Northern thing at the time, I asked her if she happened to know how to make pumpkin muffins.

Her face immediately lit up with glee at getting to pass this recipe on to one more person and now I share that glee in passing it on to you. To quote the person who first gave it to me…”If you want to make the BEST pumpkin muffins on earth…”

Oooh ooh! The best part…I added the streusel topping from Grandmama’s Sweet Potato Casserole to them! They were good before but now - WOW! Tastes like something you’d get in a coffee shop. Go ahead, impress someone with your culinary skill today. Just make sure you hide the cake mix box in the very bottom of your trash can. Putting a few crumpled paper towels on top of it wouldn’t hurt, either.

For the muffins, you’ll need: A box of spice cake mix and a can of pumpkin.

I have no idea why I am on such a cake mix kick lately.

I swear to y’all I know how to make things from scratch.

But this is so easy and so gooooood!

Dump your can of pumpkin and your box of cake mix in a bowl. Add 1/2 cup water. Thats it. Seriously.

Honest!!!

Ohmigosh! these are good. I made these a few weeks ago for this tutorial and I got up early this morning to make them for breakfast after working on this tutorial last night!!!

Oh, I was showing y’all how to make these, wasn’t I?

~sighs~ Y’all are slave drivers, you know that? ~winks~

Alright, mix all of that up until it looks like this.

Grease your muffin tin well with either cooking spray or shortening.

I was out of cooking spray so I used shortening.

Measure out your batter into greased muffin cups.

This doesn’t rise too much so you can fill them a bit fuller thank you normally do.

Now lets make our streusel or Yum Topping as my kidders call it.

(They are just not very worldly at this point and words like streusel kinda freak them out a bit.

The angle of this picture is making me dizzy. I could edit it and rotate it but I’d have to do that in another program and Katy has found my son’s battery operated pencil sharpener and is currently sharpening every pencil she can find down to a nub so I kinda need to get on with this tutorial)

In a bowl, place your stick of margarine, cup of brown sugar, and cup of plain flour.

Yes, this is making a lot but don’t worry, I’ll show ya what to do with leftovers.

With a long tined fork, cut in your margarine. Just keep pressing down with your fork like I am doing here until it looks like the next picture, you’ll need to stir a bit as you cut.

If your margarine is not room temp, this is going to be pretty difficult so plan ahead a bit for this.

Don’t try to take a shortcut of warming your margarine in the microwave, that will create melted spots and your topping will become rather sticky and more of a pain to deal with in general. Just put it on the counter, take a few deep breaths, and go read Southern Plate for a bit ~winks and grins~

Voila! Ze topping is done!!!!

(This is streusel, so that was my German accent. Kinda lacking, I know.)

I sprinkled my yum topping over half of them and patted it down a bit.

If you have any topping left, just put it in a plastic bag and store it in your fridge to use as a topping on other muffins, coffee cakes, or the like in the next few weeks. If you don’t know when you are going to be able to use it, just stick it in the freezer. Thats what I did and this morning I got it out and used it when I made these again.

Bake at 350 for 20-24 minutes!

Remove from pan and dig in !

Don’t these look lovely? You can only imagine how wonderful they make your house smell!

Streusel Topped Pumpkin Spice Muffins

1 box spice cake mix

1 can pumpkin

1/2 cup water

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 12 cup muffin tin. In mixing bowl, place all ingredients. Mix until well blended. Scoop into muffin tin. Make topping.

Topping:
1 C Brown Sugar
1 Stick Margarine
1 C Flour

Stir together flour and brown sugar, breaking up any lumps. Cut in margarine. Spoon or sprinkle on top of muffins, pat down slightly. Bake at 350 for 20-24 minutes.

*Any leftover topping can be refrigerated for several weeks or frozen for several months until needed.
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Today is a great day just waiting to happen!

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18 Comments »

1

Heather (author) said:

Wunderbar! These look yummy!

- November 16, 2008 at 12:44 am

2

Southern Plate (author) said:

~hands you a muffin~
Have y’all seen “Enchanted”? Every time I make something like this I hand it to my kids and imitate the little chipmunk..”Want some? Its goood!”
hehe
Christy
Y’all need to see that movie, we just loved it. Its hilarious for adults as well as kids and has that grey’s anatomy guy everyone loves so much.

- November 16, 2008 at 12:48 am

3

Anonymous (author) said:

Those do look fantastic, Christy. They would be lower fat than regular mix-made muffins except for the streusal. But who would want to miss THAT!?

As long as you are the cake mix kick, try this one: 1 box devils food or chocolate fudge cake mix and 1 can of the coconut/pecan frosting you would use for german chocolate cake. Make the cake by the directions on the box but stir in the frosting before you put the batter in a prepared bundt pan. Bake like the box says. Amazing how moist and delish this is.

- November 16, 2008 at 12:49 am

4

Tomato Lady (author) said:

Only two ingredients! Brilliant!

- November 16, 2008 at 12:49 am

5

Courtney (author) said:

I love Enchanted! Such a cute movie. This looks so good! I have made cupcakes with chocolate cake mix and pumpkin before and they are so moist and delicious. And this just sounds even better…especially with the yummy topping!

- November 16, 2008 at 12:56 am

6

BillGent (author) said:

I’m not a fan of Pumpkin but these look good. With only two ingredients I couldn’t screw it up too bad haha.

- November 16, 2008 at 12:56 am

7

messeis (author) said:

These look great. I am not a pumpkin pie person, but I love anything baked with pumpkin. I can’t wait to try these.

- November 16, 2008 at 12:57 am

8

Life at the Lake (author) said:

These look wonderful! I planned to make pumpkin bread this afternoon but I think I will change my plan and try these muffins after picking up a cake mix.

- November 16, 2008 at 12:58 am

9

Harmony (author) said:

I just made a cake last night that’s almost the same! One box yellow cake mix, one can pumpkin. Mix and bake for a half hour, then topped with a glaze made from apple cider, powdered sugar, and pumpkin pie spice. Fabulous fabulous find, I was just going to make the cake again but now I may have to try these muffins!

- November 16, 2008 at 12:58 am

10

Claire (author) said:

I’ve made these before without the topping. I bet that just makes them even better!

- November 16, 2008 at 12:58 am

11

Megan (author) said:

Love the topping. I often use pumpkin mixed in cake mix. It makes it so moist. Pumpkin tastes great in chocoalte cake mix too!

- November 16, 2008 at 1:00 am

12

Zesty Cook (author) said:

grats little treat Christy! I love pumpkin

- November 16, 2008 at 1:00 am

13

Gibby said:

These look dee-lish, and something that I could actually handle!
P.S. Not only are your posts informative, but funny!

- November 16, 2008 at 10:30 pm

14

Lisa said:

these turned out great!!! So easy and sooo moist.

- November 17, 2008 at 6:23 pm

15

Lynda said:

Am making this right now…smell great.
Can they be frozen?

- November 18, 2008 at 11:39 am

16

maryanne said:

I learned about the muffins like this in a weight watchers meeting.
minis the toppins, it was 1 pt. for each muffin.
yum yum! It fills you up too!

- November 24, 2008 at 2:44 pm

17

Matthews Family said:

Christy, what size is the can of pumpkin? It looks like an average 14.5oz can in the photo but I’ve got 29oz in my cupboard. Maybe I need to make a double batch and surprise the kids.

- November 25, 2008 at 12:36 am

18

Tammy said:

Well…well….I see there are some changes around here…lol!
This is the last post that has shown up in my google reader…I got a little concerned and finally clicked and found you had a new set up…Oh my…I had some catching up to do…darn Google reader anyhow!!

- December 6, 2008 at 9:58 am