Welcome to the epitome of fall baking! (Well, besides apple cake and apple crisp.) These are my super-moist, deliciously spiced, and extra soft pumpkin muffins. They’re adapted from my popular pumpkin crumb cake muffins and aren’t quite as sweet, making them the perfect “anytime” treat during the fall season. You could even add chocolate chips for extra tasty pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. No mixer required!
One reader, Nicole, commented: “Another winner, of course. We made the mini muffin version and they were so light, moist, and delicious. Perfect breakfast compliment for this crisp fall morning! ★★★★★”
Another reader, Holly, commented: “First time making these. Did half regular and half with chocolate chips, and they came out delicious and very moist. Even my picky daughter loved them… This recipe is definitely a keeper. ★★★★★“
Meet my favorite pumpkin muffin recipe, the sequel to my favorite zucchini muffins and banana muffins. I appreciate “simple” muffin recipes like these because sometimes we don’t crave all the bells and whistles of pumpkin cream cheese muffins… right? Over-the-top muffins are undoubtedly delicious, but I’m certain you’ll want to make today’s easy pumpkin muffins again and again. Why?
Here’s Why You’ll Love My Simple Pumpkin Muffins
- Reliable, easy recipe with basic ingredients
- No mixer needed
- Extra soft & moist
- Deep pumpkin spice flavor (you can use your homemade pumpkin pie spice!)
- Dairy free if using dairy-free milk
- Very adaptable recipe—add chocolate chips, nuts, or dried cranberries; sprinkle with coarse sugar; or leave plain
How are these different from pumpkin cupcakes? My pumpkin cupcakes recipe is a favorite! In that recipe, you use less flour and milk with the same amount of pumpkin, so the cupcakes have a much lighter, airier texture. Today’s muffins are thicker and denser with just as much flavor.
Grab These 11 Ingredients:
- Flour: Use all-purpose flour in this recipe. If desired, you can replace half of the flour with whole wheat flour for a heartier, denser pumpkin muffin.
- Baking Soda: Helps the muffins rise. There’s no need for baking powder and, in fact, I’ve made these pumpkin cream cheese muffins with only baking soda before too. (Just leave out the baking powder in those; truly no noticeable difference in the outcome.)
- Cinnamon, Ginger, & Pumpkin Pie Spice: Pumpkin is tasty, but in order to really bring out its flavor, you need some warming spices like cinnamon, ginger, and pumpkin pie spice. You can use store-bought or try my homemade pumpkin pie spice blend. Pumpkin pie spice already includes cinnamon and ginger, but for the BEST, deepest flavor, I recommend using all 3. See recipe Note.
- Pumpkin Puree: You need 1 and 1/2 cups (about 340g) of pumpkin puree, which is most of a standard 15-ounce can. Do not use pumpkin pie filling. Just like with these pumpkin snickerdoodles, canned pumpkin is best, but you could use fresh puree if that’s what you have.
- Oil: The muffins taste dry and rubbery without some fat. Just as if we’re making pumpkin cake and pumpkin coffee cake, use vegetable oil. You could also use melted coconut oil.
- Brown & White Sugars: Pumpkin adds a lot of volume to the muffin batter, but doesn’t sweeten it at all. Using half white and brown sugars provide enough sweetening, and the brown sugar adds additional flavor.
- Eggs: Provide structure.
- Milk: Like most muffin recipes, the batter needs a liquid. You can use whole milk, buttermilk, or any dairy or nondairy milk you enjoy. I use orange juice in my pumpkin bread recipe, but using orange juice (for the amount of liquid needed here) wasn’t ideal here. The muffins were too citrus-y. You could, of course, replace *some* of the milk with *some* orange juice.
This is optional, but I love adding a little coarse sugar to the tops of the pumpkin muffins before baking. I do this in a lot of my muffin recipes (both online and in my book) because it adds a sparkly crunch—just like real bakery muffins! You can use something like Sugar in the Raw or white sparkling sugar. And don’t forget my high-temperature trick, included in the written recipe and explained in the Notes below.
As instructed in the printable recipe below, grab a large bowl for the dry ingredients, a medium bowl for the wet ingredients, then whisk it all together. Expect a thick batter:
Fill the muffin liners all the way to the top:
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins
You can turn these easy pumpkin muffins into pumpkin chocolate chip muffins! Simply fold 1 cup (about 180g) of chocolate chips in the batter right before spooning into your muffin pan.
If you enjoy pumpkin + chocolate together, be sure to try my chocolate pumpkin muffins as well. For extreme chocolate and pumpkin lovers only!
More Pumpkin Favorites
- Pumpkin Pie and Pumpkin Cheesecake Pie
- Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Pumpkin Donuts
- Pumpkin Cake
- Pumpkin Bars
- Pumpkin Pancakes or Pumpkin Waffles
- Pumpkin Bundt Cake
- Mini Cinnamon Sugar Pumpkin Muffins
- Pumpkin Coffee Creamer
- Pumpkin Oatmeal Cream Pies
For even more inspiration, here are my 30+ best pumpkin dessert recipes.
Print
Easy Pumpkin Muffins
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 21 minutes
- Total Time: 45 minutes
- Yield: 12 muffins
- Category: Muffins
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
These muffins are adapted from my popular pumpkin crumb cake muffins and aren’t quite as sweet, making them the perfect “anytime” treat during the fall season. You could even add chocolate chips for extra tasty pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. No mixer required!
Ingredients
- 1 and 3/4 cups (219g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 and 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1 and 1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice*
- 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup (120ml) vegetable oil (or melted coconut oil)
- 1/2 cup (100g) granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup (100g) packed light or dark brown sugar
- 1 and 1/2 cups (340g) canned pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
- 2 large eggs
- 1/4 cup (60ml) milk (dairy or nondairy)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425°F (218°C). Spray a 12-count muffin pan with nonstick spray or line with cupcake liners.
- In a large bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, ginger, and salt together until combined. Set aside.
- In a medium bowl, whisk the oil, granulated sugar, brown sugar, pumpkin puree, eggs, and milk together until combined. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, and then fold everything together gently just until combined and no flour pockets remain.
- Spoon the batter into liners, filling them all the way to the top.
- Bake for 5 minutes at 425°F, then, keeping the muffins in the oven, reduce the oven temperature to 350°F (177°C). Bake for an additional 16–17 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. The total time these muffins take in the oven is about 21–22 minutes, give or take. Allow the muffins to cool for 5 minutes in the muffin pan before enjoying.
- Cover tightly and store at room temperature for up to 1 week.
Notes
- Freezing Instructions: For longer storage, freeze the muffins for up to 3 months. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator, then heat up in the microwave if desired.
- Special Tools (affiliate links): 12-count Muffin Pan | Cupcake Liners | Glass Mixing Bowls | Whisk
- Pumpkin Pie Spice & Spices: You can find pumpkin pie spice in the baking aisle of most grocery stores or make your own homemade pumpkin pie spice. If you don’t have either and want to use individual spices, use 1/4 teaspoon each ground cinnamon, ground cloves, ground nutmeg, and ground allspice, and 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger. Do not leave out the 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon that is also called for in this recipe. Depending how much you like ginger, you can skip or leave in the extra 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger that is also called for in this recipe.
- Can I reduce the sugar or oil? You can absolutely slightly reduce either or both, but understand that sugar and oil help produce moist, tender muffins and the results may be disappointing and your muffins could taste dry. For the oil, feel free to swap *some* for applesauce. You could also try substituting all or most of both sugars with coconut sugar.
- Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins/Other Add-Ins: Simply fold 1 cup (about 180g) of chocolate chips in the batter right before spooning into your muffin pan. Or you can add 1 cup (about 130g) of chopped pecans or walnuts, or 3/4 cup (about 105g) of dried cranberries.
- Mini Muffins: For around 30 mini muffins, line mini muffin pans with liners or spray with nonstick spray. Prepare batter as directed and fill liners to the top. Bake at 350°F (177°C) the entire time (skip the initial high temperature) for 11–13 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
- Why the initial high oven temperature? Like I do for most muffin recipes, bake the muffins for 5 minutes at a very hot temperature. Then, keeping the muffins in the oven, switch to a lower temperature for the remaining bake time. This initial high temperature will quickly lift the muffin tops so they’re extra high, then the centers will bake during the lower temperature bake time. This trick makes beautiful bakery-style muffins every time.
Turned out great! I didn’t have the ginger spice on hand so I put in a few dashes of ground nutmeg! I also added 1/2 teaspoon on vanilla! These were so good! My daughter asked me to write the recipe down for her to make for her future kids ! She is 9 ! Lol!
Great recipe and I love the tip about 5 min at high temp as well as the sugar sprinkles on top. Thanks!!
I made these but there are several so I’d like to freeze them. Should I freeze them on a cookie sheet and then bag them or bag them first and then freeze?
Hi BB, you can bag them and then freeze. Hope you enjoyed the muffins!
These came out great! I followed your recipe without any modifications. My grandkids loved them!
These are delicious! All the right textures – a hint of a crisp muffin top, moist and dense inside. Ohhhhh, soooo good. And the homemade pumpkin pie spice, I’ll be keeping some of that around all winter. I enjoyed the instructions – such as hand mix – fold in gently. I usually toss in the mixer and away I go. But this is the best way to do it. Thank you so much.
I am looking to do a Pumpkin Banana Muffin. Do you have a recipe for that?
Hi Connie, we haven’t tested it but you should be able to replace some of the pumpkin puree with mashed banana. You could do the same (replace some of the mashed banana with pumpkin puree) in these banana muffins. Let us know if you give anything a try!
What is the nutrition breakdown? Cal per muffin?
Hi MD, We don’t usually include nutrition information as it can vary between different brands of the same ingredients. Plus, many recipes have ingredient substitutions or optional ingredients listed. However, there are many handy online calculators where you can plug in and customize your exact ingredients/brands. Readers have found this one especially helpful: https://www.verywellfit.com/recipe-nutrition-analyzer-4157076
I put it into the calculator and it listed 281 calories per muffin!
Amazing! I subbed out the sugar for 1/2 a cup of maple syrup and extended the cook time by 5 minutes. This will absolutely be a new staple in our home. So delicious!!!
Just put my second batch in the oven because the first batch I made two days ago are gone! I accidentally put in a whole can of pumpkin (425g) and forgot the milk, but they came out perfect! I should note that I’m baking at high altitude (5k). Thanks for a new recipe for my family cookbook!
I added chocolate chips and that was really good.
Came out great! Delicious spice flavor with moist pumpkin. Just perfect.
Hi for the easy pumpkin muffin recipe you said in the tips you could swap out some of the oil with applesauce. How much is some? The recipe calls for a half of cup of vegetable oil or coconut oil. So how much applesauce can I use instead of either oil?
Hi Deborah, you could try 1/4 cup applesauce and 1/4 cup oil.
I have done that with manymuffin and quick bread recipes calkunf fir oil. IT WORKS OUT WELL & NO taste change. You could pribably use 1/4C more pumpjin puree that you have left from the punpkin can…justt be sure ti measure BOTH.
Shocked that this has so many good reviews. The pumpkin taste is non-existent, and you can actually taste the flour. The only thing I liked was that it was moist, and not too sweet. I was not surprised that some people mentioned that they wanted it to be sweeter. Also, I thought it was weird that vanilla wasn’t an ingredient.
Hi Houston, I wonder if the batter was under-mixed if you can taste the flour? Or if the muffins were under-baked. These are quite generously spiced. Did you accidentally leave any ingredients out or use fresh pureed pumpkin? I prefer these with canned. You can certainly add vanilla, but I don’t so it doesn’t take away from the pure pumpkin flavor.
I had a bunch of extra sweet potatoes laying around and made these with the baked flesh instead of pumpkin puree. They turned out delicious!
These are seriously the best pumpkin muffins I’ve ever had. They were moist and perfect, and my whole family went nuts for them. For some reason, I didn’t have enough batter for 12 muffins, but the other 11 were wonderful!
My family loved these muffins. First time out, I double the recipe and was glad I did! We had the first batch almost gone by the time the second dozen was done!! I printed the recipe and it will get transferred to my “favorites” recipe book.
This was great – I swapped melted butter for vegetable oil (because it’s terrible for you) and added chopped pecans and chocolate chips. VERY good!! But honestly the ads made it extremely hard to see and follow the recipe. Which suuuucked. I wrote down the recipe so I don’t have to deal with ads again
Hi Bella, happy to hear you loved this recipe. I’m sorry to hear the ads are getting in the way of viewing the recipe. Ads should not be blocking anything, and we will have our tech support team look into this. Also, if you want to view the recipe without ads, you can click on Print Recipe, which should open the print view in a new tab.
Very tasty! A dense, satisfying muffin that is spiced perfectly. I used whole wheat flour, decreased the sugars by about a third, added raisins to the batter, and sprinkled pumpkin seeds on top. Turned out amazing. Still had great texture even with less sugar and WW flour.
I’m trying jumbo sized muffins -any advice?
Hi Patti, you can use this batter for jumbo muffins. You can follow the baking times and instructions from these jumbo blueberry muffins as a guide.
I was surprised they were a little bland. I expected them to be sweeter. Everyone else loved them, so it is likely I just like my pumpkin goods on the sweeter side. I always turn to Sally’s Baking Addiction for new recipes because they never fail. I’ll try adding chocolate as that may do the trick for me!
I used this as a base for jumbo protein muffins. I swapped 1/4c flour for vanilla protein powder, reduced oil to 1/4c, just used 1/2c brown sugar (it may have needed more), swapped milk for 1/2c yogurt, 1/2c egg whites instead of whole eggs. I sprinkled course sugar on top and they turned out pretty good!
So you made a totally different recipe then? Lol good Lord…
I followed the recipe exactly and the muffins turned out great. The 425 degrees really made them pop! I added walnuts and that crunch really added to them. The only question I have is why no vanilla extract? When I was gathering the ingredients, I just automatically took the vanilla out of the pantry cabinet, but then realized I didn’t see it in the recipe. I was going to add it, but then I thought no let me not mess anything up. I did read another recipe that did include vanilla and that it really adds another dimension to the flavor. Next time I just might add the vanilla and see what happens.
Hi Ms. K, we’re so glad you enjoyed the muffins! We don’t find the vanilla necessary here with all the other flavors going on, but you can certainly add some to future batches if you wish.
This was Amazing. I made a double batch so both my hubby and I could bring some in for coworkers
These muffins were delish, but a bit too moist. Do you recommend straining the canned pumpkin to remove some of the moisture. I’ve seen a few posts that say it is always a good thing to do, but I’m concerned the muffins will then be too dry.
Hi Laura, you can blot or strain the pumpkin a bit if your muffins are coming out too moist, but just don’t go too far with it, as you want a lot of that moisture in this muffin batter.
Another tip you can try is swapping out the 3/4 C of All porpose flour for 3/4 C Golden wheat flour by King Arthur. It is a whole wheat flour that is very mild tasting. So nobody even knows its whole wheat. BUT wheat flours in general tend to need just a BIT more moisture. So that “could” help.
Delicious and festive! Love the ingredients to give the holiday taste.
Made this recipes a couple of years ago!? Just got my hands on some canned Pumpkin so looked out the recipe again! Not disappointed, delicious My husband ate 2 straight off there’s no keeping fresh for a week chance! He says they’ll be gone by Tuesday!! Thanks again Sally a lovely treat!
These are delicious! I can’t wait for my toddler to try them, he’s going to love them just as much as he loves your banana muffins! I SO appreciate the simple, healthier, and delicious recipes. The high initial baking time is game changer for muffins
Can this recipe be made into pumpkin bread too?
Hi Stacey, you can use this recipe for pumpkin bread, which will give you the right amount of batter for a standard 9×5 loaf pan. Enjoy!
Absolutely delicious! I love the perfectly moist texture and the sugar top crunch. I used more spices (added China 5 spice) because I like it heavy on spice. I used all dark brown granulated sugar because I ran out of white. Super yum. Thank you!
Hmm. Mine came out tasting like oil with an essence of pumpkin muffin – even the muffin tins were stained. I’ll try coconut oil next time — or should I try less than 1/2 cup? I can tell they’d be good otherwise! We still enjoyed them!
Hi Jane, were the muffins a bit undercooked by chance? They should be moist but not oily. We don’t recommend reducing the oil, as it provides necessary moisture and you may find the muffins to be a bit too dry. Thank you for giving these a try!