Keep Calm & Bake - Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

I was finally starting to feel  a little better today so I thought I'd try get back into the swing of things and bake up something good. I was craving something "pumpkiny" (haha  I know that's not a word!) and I remembered that I had a two ingredient recipe on one of my Pinterest Boards. The recipe called for one can of pumpkin pie filling and yellow cake mix.  I switched it up a bit and used Spice cake mix and added mini chocolate chips to it. YUM! 

• One box of Spice or Yellow Cake Mix. I think you can use any kind actually, but like I said, I was in the mood for something "Pumpkiny"
• One can of pumpkin puree
• Chocolate chips (if you wish and as much as you want!) I did not measure, I just poured some here and there
• Pumpkin Pie spice .. again I didn't measure. I added about 3 or 4 shakes (BIG SHAKES!)
• I noticed that as I was mixing the batter, it seemed a little thick, so I added about 2/3 cups of water to the mixture. 

And that's it for the ingredients. Make sure to mix well. 

I used mini Halloween cupcake liners. Spooky huh?  You can also use regular size cupcake liners.

Line your pan with baking cups and fill with batter. I used about

1 teaspoon in each mini cup. 

[**Notice how the batter looks uneven in the cups?? 

I will come back to this in a few pictures down. **]

I baked the muffins at 325 Degrees for 30 minutes (but different ovens & times may vary).

** Ok, remember how I mentioned to note that the batter was uneven? Well this is what the muffin will look once it's done baking. What I forgot to do with my first batch was to smooth down the batter before I baked it. To do this, wet the back of a spoon and smooth of the top of the batter once it's already in the baking cup.  This will help create a nicer top when the muffin bakes.

Here is a picture of the second batch. This looks much nicer and will be easier to decorate.

You don't have to do this step though! It's totally up to you. I just did it because I forgot I was planning to decorate a few of them. I used cream cheese frosting in the pictures below.

Ever wonder how to make those spider webs on cupcakes and cookies? Well here is a quick tutorial!

1. Pipe 3 - 5 circles onto your cupcake (the number of circles depends on the size of cupcake you are decorating).

2. Take a toothpick and starting from the center circle, drag the toothpick down so that the icing also goes down with it. Drag all the way down from the center to the outside circle. You may need to do some "re-tracing" if the icing doesn't follow all the way down the first time. 

3. Continue step 2 until you complete your spider web.

4. Ta-dah! All done. Easy right? 

You can also do the following:

~Alternate circle colors of the spider web

~Frost a base color first (such as black) and then pipe on a white spider web

The Final Yummy Product!

I'd love to hear if you tried this out and see how you liked it!

I was playing and made a little mummy one too!!

Happy Halloween from our home to yours!