About a month ago I was on Pinterest (my husband calls me a Pinaholic) browsing through the wonderfully picturesque food recipes when I stumbled across a recipe for Pumpkin Spice Mini Donuts from baking bloggers Blue Eyed Bakers. They looked and sounded delicious! I HAD to make them. After searching for a mini donut pan, I settled for a mini muffin pan (assuming that I would get more use out of it). I followed the recipe exactly, taking the different baking times for muffins versus donuts into consideration. They came out of the pan perfectly after 13 minutes and they looked amazing! The hubby waited not-so-patiently for them to cool enough to swallow (chewing for him is overrated).

Finally we were able to taste this long-awaited recipe and…I was tremendously disappointed. They didn’t taste quite like I expected I guess. They had been baked perfectly and were moist…but not nearly pumpkiny enough! I wanted it to taste like a harvest-scented candle in my mouth! So even though this blog post was long overdue (sorry Ash), I decided to tweak the recipe to make it all I could hope for…like a pumpkin pie muffin. So please enjoy my creation!

INGREDIENTS

1 3/4 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoons ground cloves
½ teaspoon dried ginger
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup canned pumpkin
1/3 cup milk
cinnamon sugar mixture for topping

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven 350 F.  Grease a mini muffin pan and set aside. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt and spices together and set aside.

In a large bowl (or the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment) whisk together oil, brown sugar, egg, vanilla, pumpkin and milk until combined. Slowly add the dry ingredients into the mixture and stir until just combined, careful not to over mix.

Using a pastry bag or a steady hand and a spoon, fill each muffin cup with the batter. The muffin cups should be fairly full, but not overflowing. Bake for 11-13 minutes, until muffins spring back when gently pressed. Remove from oven and let muffins cool in the pan. While the muffins are still slightly warm, roll them in the cinnamon sugar mixture.

Store in an air-tight container for up to a week. Yields 24 mini muffins.

**Note: I think adding chopped walnuts or pecans to these muffins would taste amazing! I didn’t do it this time around, but feel free to experiment and let us know how they turn out!