Ah, fall is in the air. The leaves are starting to fall in serious numbers, there is a chill to the nighttime air, school is back in session, and road rage is at an-all time high.
What? Road rage??
If you have spent any time near an establishment of learning in a vehicle with wheels within roughly an hour of the start or dismissal time, you know exactly what I mean. My daughter’s school is less than 2 miles from our house, yet I spend 30 minutes every morning starting and stopping the entire way to her school. The worst part is that there is a middle school right next to her high school, and middle schoolers can’t walk – ever. Every single one must be dropped off. Some, by two vehicles.
Once I get through the sludge of dropping my daughter off, then I have to take my husband to work. (We are a one-car family ya’ll). The traffic moves blissfully faster in that direction, but he works out in the boonies (i.e. the middle of a cornfield), so by the time I get home I am starving. I open the pantry door and grab the box of cereal. I give it a little shake. Someone has indeed put an empty box of cereal back in the pantry. But who could it be? Surely no one residing under this roof! Casper the Ghost strikes again.
They say that necessity is the mother of invention, so out of such hunger and frustration, the world’s easiest pumpkin spice brownie muffins were born. What are brownie muffins? Aside from being a figment of my imagination, they are muffins that are too chocolatey and moist to be plain muffins. Yes, I said the word. MOIST.
Pumpkin Spice Brownie Recipe
Now, this is pretty detailed, so make sure you get a pen. First, you need a store-bought cake mix. Like, in a box. Can be out of the health food section, or 89¢ with things on the ingredient list you can’t pronounce. I sprung for the latter. Secondly, you need a can of pumpkin. Not pumpkin pie filling, actual pumpkin. Make sure you let your dogs clean the spoon (pumpkin is good for upset doggie tummies. And good for doggies that just like pumpkin).
Next, you need the spice. I used 2 drops of Young Living Cinnamon Bark, and 1 drop of Young Living Nutmeg essential oils. You could probably sub dry spices in place of essential oils, but your brownie muffins won’t be as cool as mine.
Pop the pumpkin and cake mix into your mixer, and mix. You could even be a rebel and mix this by hand. Add the drops of essential oils as it mixes. I used the whisk attachment on my Kitchenaid because it whips in some air and makes the batter a very mousse-y consistency.
Preheat your oven according the the directions on the cake mix box, and then add your brownie batter to muffin liners. If you don’t have any (or enough. Not that I am talking about myself, or anything), you can spray a muffin pan with non-stick spray and plop them right in liner-less.
Bake according to the package directions, and stick a toothpick in the middle to make sure they are done. If it comes out clean, they are done. If it comes out gooey, they aren’t.
Let them cool slightly before you eat them. Ideally, you will leave some for the kids.
Have you ever tried one of these cake mix recipes? How did it turn out?
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