Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes

Really good. Everyone loved them on Thanksgiving and when I saw my brother-in-law a few days later he commented on on how much he enjoyed them. It's fun to share a memorable dessert with family and friends.

I made a quick and easy variation of this recipe by using dark chocolate cake mix and cream cheese frosting instead of making them from scratch. I added about 1/2 cup pumpkin puree to the cake mix, and decreased the oil by 1/4 cup. To the frosting I added 1 spoonful of pumpkin and about 1/8 tsp pumpkin spice. I made mini-cupcakes for a bite-sized dessert and they turned out wonderfully!

These are more like a brownie in texture than a cupcake, but still very tasty. The pumpkin flavor in both the cake and frosting is very light, not overwhelming like it seemed it would be.

I served these at Thanksgiving and was hoping for more of a pumpkin flavor. Also, there is still a lot of oil so I'm not sure what the purpose of the pumpkin is since you can't taste it. The cupcake is moist but just takes like a chocolate cupcake. I made the browned butter cinnamon cream cheese frosting and that made it over the top.