Special thanks to Angie Sharp for letting me use her beautiful picture!
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 Casseroleto 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.
Ingredients
For the Muffins:
- 1 box spice cake mix
- 1 can pumpkin
- 1/2 cup water
For the Topping:
- 1 Cup Brown Sugar
- 1/2 Cup Stick Margarine or butter
- 1 Cup Flour
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 12 cup muffin tin.
- In mixing bowl, place all ingredients. Mix until well blended. Scoop into muffin tin.
- For the topping, stir together flour and brown sugar, breaking up any lumps. Cut in butter or margarine. Spoon or sprinkle on top of muffins, pat down slightly.
- Bake at 350 for 20-24 minutes.
Nutrition
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