Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes

Take a bite into this super moist delicious cupcake. Chocolate and pumpkin flavors blended to perfection. The cupcake has only 3 ingredients, so does the frosting. Quick and easy, but so scrumptious. While low in both calories and sugar, nobody has to know these Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes are on the healthy side.

Enjoy a 130 calorie cupcake vs. a typical 420 calorie chocolate frosted cupcake. And the sugar?  Yeah, go from a typical 46 gram sugar cupcake down to 10 grams. 

It’s not sugar free, but it’s a whole lot better and you’d never know from the delicious taste.

Wondering how so few ingredients?

Start with a chocolate cake mix, and there’s a lot right there. Skip the eggs and oil, and instead, add a can of pure pumpkin. Water is added to make the batch go a bit further.

There you have it, 3 ingredients for the cupcakes. 

The frosting is amazing by any frosting standards. Again, 3 ingredients is all you need. A small box of chocolate pudding, some milk, and lastly, frozen whipped topping. 

This is the same recipe as my Pumpkin Pudding Frosting, only using chocolate pudding instead. In fact, swap out the pudding for any favorite flavor you want to use.

 

Making Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes

You’ll need 2 muffin tins and 20 cupcake liners. Preheat your oven to 350°, but you’ll probably be done making the cupcakes before the oven is hot. 

In a large bowl, mix the pure pumpkin with the water. Add to that the cake mix and stir thoroughly.

About the cake mix…chocolate is always delicious, but a spice cake is also really great mixed with pumpkin. I made both for this blog. 

Divide the batter up evenly between the 20 liners, and it’s time to bake.

Bake the cupcakes for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out mostly clean. 

Making a batch of pudding frosting

Pudding frosting is so easy and so great for piping. I try to use it every chance I get, because it’s so user friendly. In addition, this frosting is not too sweet.

I always use my mixer for pudding, so start by adding the milk and turning the beaters on. Add the dry pudding mix to the milk, which helps to avoid getting those annoying lumps. 

Next, add in the whipped topping. Once it’s all blended, refrigerate the frosting until the cupcakes are cool enough. 

Not mentioned in the recipe, I grated some dark chocolate into the frosting. I also added some on top. Can you ever have too much chocolate?

Coffee options

Adding a teaspoon of coffee to the cake and/or frosting is delicious. There’s such a connection between the two that’s indisputable. 

So, if you love that extra bite in your chocolate, add some coffee. 

Piping the frosting on Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes

I love Wilton’s 1M frosting tip. That, and the 2D. Together, I don’t really need anything else, especially for cupcakes.

The bigger the tip, the fewer imperfections show. 

In other words, smaller tips seem to show more imperfections, but that might be all in my head. 

Plus, bigger tips frost faster. 

You don’t need to pipe this frosting at all, it’s just my preference. You might prefer spreading it on, which looks great, too.

Looking for other cupcake recipes? Try these out:

• Caramel Apple Spice Cupcakes
• Chocolate Vanilla Cupcakes
• Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes
• French Toast Cupcakes
• Brown Butter Cupcakes

This recipe was inspired by Hungry Girl recipe for Brownie Muffins. I remember eating these years ago, but the recipe only makes 12. That wasn’t enough for my frosting recipe, so I added some water and spread them out to 20 cupcake liners, which is where Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes came from.

Since I’m a major frosting girl, I knew a cupcake was in the making so I’d have something to frost. 

I love hearing from my readers

At the top of my blog is a light purple “P” for Pinterest. Here you can follow me on Pinterest, in which case, I’d love for you to comment and post a picture of your cupcakes. 

Also, below you can rate and comment on this recipe. 

I sincerely hope you enjoy this recipe and wish you happy baking.

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