My kids love to have muffins for breakfast. Well, who doesn’t love to eat cake in the morning? You know the person who invented muffins just wanted an excuse to eat cake for breakfast! My kids think that person is brilliant. About once a week I indulge them and we have muffins. Over the past two weeks I’ve tried some semi-homemade versions. You know… keep it sweet, keep it simple, keep it semi-homemade.

Here, I took a regular box of chocolate chip muffin mix, but then added a streusel topping before baking.

Streusel Topping:

1/2 cup flour
4 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons sugar

These yummies are made from the same chocolate chip muffin mix, but they have a pumpkin twist.

The recipe came from the Cake Mix Doctor. I have two of her books, but this recipe came from the website.

1 package (17.8 ounces) chocolate chip muffin mix
1 cup canned pumpkin
½ cup milk
1 large egg
½ teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

1. Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 400° F. Mist the bottom of 12 muffin cups with the vegetable oil spray. Set the pan aside

2. Place the muffin mix in a large mixing bowl and make a well in the center. Place the pumpkin, milk, egg, and pumpkin pie spice in the well and stir the wet ingredients together with a wooden spoon just until combined, 20 strokes. The batter will still be a little lumpy. Spoon or scoop 1/3 cup batter into each prepared muffin cup, filling it three quarters of the way full. Place the pan in the oven.

3. Bake the muffins until they just spring back when lightly pressed with your finger, 20 to 22 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and place it on a wire rack to cool for 5 minutes. Run a dinner knife around the edges of the muffins, lift them up from the bottoms of the cups using the end of the knife, and pick them out of the cups carefully with your fingertips. Place them on a wire rack to cool for 15 minutes. The muffins are ready to serve.

I also topped the muffins with a little drizzle of frosting. If you’re going to have cake for breakfast, you might as well have frosting too.

Happy baking!

Here are a few linky parties I like to participate in.