Packed with pumpkin and topped with cinnamon-sugar, these Pumpkin Muffins are soft, fluffy, moist, and absolutely delicious! The best I’ve ever made.
Easy Homemade Pumpkin Muffins
Oh my gosh, you guys! It’s pumpkin season! I’m so excited. All this changing of the seasons gives me renewed inspiration to revisit recipes from my archives. Once again, I’ve chosen these beauties: fluffy, moist, bursting-with-flavor pumpkin muffins. Clarification: The BEST pumpkin muffins.
I used to make this recipe all the time. Like, not just in the fall, but all year round. There are so many reasons I keep coming back to these muffins! They’re so fresh, so homemade… Plus they’re pretty and fluffy and lightly sweet, topped with cinnamon sugar.
Trust me, you’ll keep going back for “just one more” of these pumpkin muffins until there’s no more left to grab.
Without further adieu, let me introduce you to the Best Ever Pumpkin Muffins, in all their orangey goodness.
What You’ll Need
As I said before, I make this pumpkin muffin recipe year round, but these are especially great to bake on a fall day when your whole house will smell like one giant, freshly baked muffin. The ingredients are just so cozy and capture everything I love about fall! Below is everything you’ll need for the very best pumpkin muffins:
- All-purpose flour: Regular flour, alternatively fine-ground oat or almond flour for gluten-free muffins. Bear in mind that some alternatives might cause your muffins to not rise quite as much as with regular all-purpose flour.
- Baking Powder: Helps to achieve perfectly fluffy pumpkin muffins.
- Pumpkin Puree: 100% pure, and not pumpkin pie filling. Nothing beats the natural pumpkin flavor of either canned – or fresh! – pumpkin puree, nothing.
- Vegetable Oil: Oil brings moisture and richness for deliciously tender muffins. Canola Oil is also a great alternative that doesn’t change the taste at all.
- Eggs: Large eggs to bind everything together.
- Pumpkin Pie Spice: Traditionally a blend of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, clove, and allspice. You can find premixed pumpkin pie spice in the spice aisle of your grocery store.
- Sugar: For this easy recipe, I use granulated white sugar.
- Baking soda: Extra, extra fluffiness!
- Salt: Helps balance the sugar content.
- Cinnamon: You’ll mix some up with sugar for the cinnamon sugar topping.
How to Make Pumpkin Muffins
I vividly remember these being among the BATCHES of muffins I made after arriving home from my trip to North Macedonia. After being away for a month, I was craving good ol’ American comfort food like none other!
These super soft pumpkin muffins are just so flawlessly flavored with pumpkin and spices, and so insanely easy to make. Here we go:
- Prep & Sift: After lining your muffin tin and setting this aside, you’ll need to first sift your flour and baking powder together into a bowl.
- Combine the Ingredients: In a separate bowl, combine the pumpkin, oil, eggs, spice, sugar, baking soda, and salt and get whisking!
- Add the Flour Mixture: Thought you were done whisking? Think again! Once the wet ingredients are smooth, add in the flour mixture until just combined. After all this whisking, it’s important to not over mix!
- Fill the Muffin Tin: Once the batter has been divided evenly between the muffin cups, give each a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar before the tray goes into the oven to bake.
When a toothpick poked into the center of your muffins comes out clean, they’re ready! Be sure to remove your freshly baked muffins from the baking tin and onto a rack as soon as possible and let them cool.
Tips for Success
- Use Fresh Pumpkin: If you have some time on your hands, swap out canned pumpkin puree for freshly mashed or pureed pumpkin instead. You can also make your own with my Simple Slow Cooker Pumpkin Puree Recipe for even fresher muffins!
- Avoid Over Mixing: Over-whisking your batter can result in muffins that are tough, bake unevenly, create tunnels, or have peaked tops. Tragic, I know. Mix the wet and dry ingredients until they’re just combined to avoid any surprises.
- Beware of Overflow: Be mindful when filling your muffin cups with batter, and don’t fill them too high – 2/3 of the muffin cup is usually enough. We’re after explosions of flavor, not explosions of pumpkin muffin batter all over our ovens!
- Get Creative: If you like your muffins with a little somethin’ extra, play around with adding about 1/2 cup of chocolate chips or crushed up walnuts to the batter. For bonus indulgence, you can also dress them up with toppings like icing sugar (low cal if you prefer) or roasted pumpkin seeds for some extra crunch.
How to Store Muffins
- One of the many, many pros of these muffins is that they stay fresh for days! No fridge required.
- Keep these Pumpkin Muffins in an airtight container at room temperature for 4 to 5 days for an easy grab-and-go treat.
How to Freeze Muffins
- On the other hand, if you’re saving a batch for later, you can freeze these Pumpkin Muffins for up to 3 months.
- The best method to freeze muffins is to allow your muffins to cool in the tray after removing them from the oven.
- Once the muffins have cooled completely, put the whole tray into the freezer until frozen solid, then pop the muffins out and transfer to a freezer bag. Tada!
More Pumpkin Recipes to Try
Here are even more delicious Pumpkin recipes to dig into this season:
Pumpkin Muffins
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 cup canned 100% pumpkin puree
- 1/3 cup vegetable oil
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon pumpkin-pie spice
- 1 1/4 cups sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350.
- Line a Texas-sized (LARGE) 6-cup muffin tin with 6 paper liners and spray each liner with a nonstick spray. OR you can use a standard 12-cup muffin tin, but you’ll get about 10 muffins.
- In a medium-sized bowl sift together the flour and the baking powder. Set aside.
- In a large bowl whisk together the pumpkin, oil, eggs, spice, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Whisk until smooth.
- Whisk in the flour mixture until combined. Do not over-mix.
- In a small bowl mix together the sugar and cinnamon.
- Divide the batter evenly among the prepared muffin cups, sprinkling the cinnamon-sugar on top of each muffin.
- Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean.
- Cool for 5 minutes before turning them out onto a cooling rack.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutritional info is an estimate and provided as courtesy. Values may vary according to the ingredients and tools used. Please use your preferred nutritional calculator for more detailed info.
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I made these tonight, and they turned out amazing! Best pumpkin muffin recipe I’ve made yet! My husband and kids loved them! I plan on taking some to work in the morning too!
That’s great to hear! I’m very glad you and your family enjoyed it! Thank you for chiming in! 🙂
How long to cook if using standard muffin tray?
I suggest to start checking at the 20-minute mark. You can bake them for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean.
I made these muffins per the recipe. I didn’t have muffin size pans so I used cupcake pans and liners. The recipe gave me 12 cupcake sized muffins which were delicious. I sprayed the liners, as per the recipe, and the muffins did not stick to the liners. In all my years of baking, I have never heard of spraying the liners–but it worked so well! I used 1-1/2 Tbsp of sugar and 1-1/2 tsps of cinnamon since I had so many muffins. This worked out perfectly to top all 12 muffins. Both my son and husband enjoyed these.
PS: I baked the 12 cupcake sized muffins for 25 minutes, checking after 20 minutes.
That’s great! I’m very glad you enjoyed these muffins! Thank you so much! 🙂
Hi, can fresh pumpkin be used instead of canned?
Hi!
Yep, that’s fine as long as it’s pureed or mashed.
This muffins are amazing, I usually don’t like pumpkin but I loved this muffins and so did my 1yr old!!
That’s great! I am very happy you enjoyed it! Thank YOU! 🙂
Love that you were in Macedonia. Aren’t the people wonderful? I was there about 2009 or so visiting my daughter who was a Peace Corps volunteer there.
It’s a beautiful country.
AND I’m about to try your lovely looking Pumpkin Muffins. The photos look like they ought to smell delicious. Thanks!!
Do these freeze well?
I love all the positive comments. Everyone seems to love how their muffins turned out. I baked mine for 30 minutes. They look great on the outside but look more uncooked on the inside. Even after baking 8 more minutes, still the same mushy inside. Is this what everyone means when they say, ” they’re so moist?” Did I mix the batter too much?
I had the same problem when I tried them for the first time. I’m going to add a little extra flour and and a teaspoon of cinnamon and see if it helps. And possibly bake them longer; our oven seems to be on the low side of the temp scale. I always have to cook things longer than recommended.
Do these need to be refrigerated or can they be left out?
Hi!
Pumpkin Muffins can be kept in an airtight container at room temperature for 4 to 5 days, or frozen for up to 3 months.
I cannot praise these muffins enough!!!! They are so amazing and I have made them every fall for the last three years! This is my favorite recipe ever!! Thank you so much!!