I know it’s only August, but I can’t help it, I’m ready for pumpkin! I actually use pumpkin year round, it’s a key ingredient in my chocolate bread recipe, which both my daughters love. While it has pumpkin, the pumpkin fades behind the chocolate flavor, and isn’t very noticeable (I use it for moisture and to replace some of the oil and butter often found in breads). I was getting ready to make a loaf of this bread the other day and decided that I really wanted to have some of the pumpkin flavor as well, and next thing you know, I’ve made marbled Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins.
These muffins started with my Dark Chocolate Pumpkin Bread recipe, which I doubled and tweaked a bit, adding more pumping, dividing up the batter before adding the cocoa powder, and adding spices to the pumpkin batter.
This recipe takes a few more minutes to make these than just straight up chocolate or straight up pumpkin muffins, but it’s also a really big batch, so you can freeze some and be set for breakfast for a while.
I made my version with white whole wheat flour, but you can use all purpose flour as well. It will certainly give you the ultimate bakery style version of these babies, but I have a serious love of white whole wheat flour in my breads and muffins.
Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup butter softened
- 2/3 cups vanilla Greek yogurt
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 15 oz can of pumpkin NOT pumpkin pie mix this is about 1 1/2 cups pumpkin
- 4 eggs
- 2 2/3 cup white whole wheat flour
- 2/3 cup dark cocoa powder
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 1-2 tsp cinnamon depending on taste
- 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
- 1/3 cup buttermilk
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line or grease 24 muffin cups.
- Combine butter and yogurt with electric mixer until completely combined. Mix in sugars and beat until fluffy. Add vanilla and pumpkin and mix until well combined. Add eggs and mix until well combined.
- In a separate bowl, combine white whole wheat flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Slowly mix into the wet ingredients.
- Divide batter equally into two bowls.
- Into one bowl add cocoa powder and buttermilk, and mix just until combined.
- In the other bowl, add cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice.
- Scoop a bit of each batter into each muffin cup (totaling about 2/3 of the way full with both batters combined). If desired use a knife to swirl together the chocolate and pumpkin.
- Bake for 15-17 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean.
- Remove from oven and allow to cool.
- These freeze great for quick weekday breakfasts. I let mine cool completely, wrap in plastic wrap then place into a freezer bag.
So good! If you can’t decide between pumpkin or chocolate, totally go for both!
Looking for more great breakfast recipes, that will even go over well with picky eater? I’ve put together a collection of the breakfast recipes I make for my kids, who are both very picky eaters. Most of these are recipes that can be made ahead and then just grab and go or pop into the microwave for those busy mornings.
Amanda says
I need to make these right now!!
Nancy P.@thebittersideofsweet says
I LOVE pumpkin all year long! I think we SHOULD use it more throughout the year! They look delicious!
Jen @ Baked by an Introvert says
What beautiful looking muffins. I think we are all ready for fall and pumpkin recipes. I’m looking forward to trying this one!
Elizabeth @ Confessions of a Baking Queen says
Great combo!! My co workers would gobble these up!
posey says
Yay, Pumpkin!!! happy to see these. i am ready for fall and pumpkin recipes too! ^^
Heather @ Shards of Lavender says
What beautiful muffins! I’m excited about fall and all the upcoming recipes that accompany its arrival:)
A Young Wife says
I am so ready for fall! I keep pumpkin stocked year round. This looks like a wonderful recipe and I cannot wait to try it! Bonus, they are beautiful as well!
Lindsay is Broke says
Hello! I just made your muffins! I made some substitutions based on our diets & what I had on hand…
– Coconut sugar/date sugar/honey mixture for the sugar
– Whole wheat pastry flour for 100% of the flour
– Vanilla bean as I’m out of extract
– I added a handful of chopped up dark chocolate to the cocoa batter because I am weak
Everything I used was at room temperature (including the eggs which sat in a warm water bath until they were room temp – about 5 minutes).
Notes:
It’s possible that my dough division was shoddy, but I found that the chocolate batter was much more dense than the pumpkin batter, and thus they finished cooking at different times – the pumpkin took much longer to set. I ended up putting the chocolate batter mostly on the bottom of the muffin tin, and the pumpkin on top. That seemed to even out the cooking and provide a studier base for the muffin.
They were a hit, though! Definitely great flavor, though I’m totally envious of how orange your pumpkin batter turned out. The whole wheat pastry flour must have dulled mine!
Thanks for the great recipe! Will definitely be using it again.
Lindsay is Broke says
Oops! I also wanted to mention that I added maybe twice the amount of buttermilk to the cocoa batter to try to make it “swirl”-able, but still wasn’t really able to get a good mix in. Fortunately, they’re just as delicious/gorgeous without the swirling!
Christi says
Hi Lindsay, glad you enjoyed them! It’s hard to account for the differences with using different sugars and flours, and I’ve even found that from one can to the next of pumpkin, there can be a great variation, and especially if using fresh or organic pumpkin, it always seems to have a different consistency each time I use it. Hopefully they were still delicious for you!
Theresa @DearCreatives says
I love the ingredients in these. I need to add this to my fall baking list.