Have I mentioned that I love fall foods? I think I might have. Pumpkin is one of my very favorite fall flavors. I love a spicy pumpkin pie, pumpkin soup, roasted pumpkin, grilled pumpkin (yes, we grill even in the fall and winter), pumpkin in all it’s forms.
So when I came across this recipe for pumpkin muffins, I was instantly hooked. Of course I couldn’t make it as written because, well, who doesn’t tinker with recipes? Ok, ok, not most people. But I do. So I did. And the results, if I do say so myself, were pretty darned good.
See, I can be taught. Here’s my mise en place for this recipe. All the ingredients, set out and ready to go. The white capped jar on the far left is my cinnamon jar. I buy cinnamon in bulk from Penzey’s (actually I buy all my spices there) and go through a jar this size about once every 6 months. Yeah, I use a lot of cinnamon.
First you mix together all the wet ingredients in a bowl until smooth.
In the world of cooking, I’ve learned that sugar and spices often count as “wet” ingredients. I love cinnamon, as I mentioned before, so I didn’t skimp here – a heaping tsp goes in.
A quick grate of fresh nutmeg, too. It doens’t take much when it’s freshly grated.
Mix the dry ingredients in a separate bowl.
Fold the dry into the wet. Do this by hand and don’t over mix.
Spoon into muffin cups. I love my square, silicone cups. They’re cute and different and cleaning up is a breeze. Also I don’t need any additional oil to grease the cups with. If you’re using a standard muffin pan, I’d recommend using paper liners for these muffins – they’re moist and sticky.
The finished product was pretty yummy.
I had enough batter for 16 muffins. Since I only have 12 muffin cups, I wound up refrigerating the remaining batter and baking the last 4 in my toaster oven the next morning, which worked brilliantly. This would be a great recipe to whip up and bake only the number of muffins that you wanted/needed for that morning or afternoon or evening snack. I would suspect that the batter would keep for several days in the fridge or you could freeze it. Maybe. I’ll have to try that.
These are incredibly moist, dense muffins. I ate one hot out of the oven and practically swooned from the pumpkiny goodness. The next morning I broke one open and spread it with cream cheese for a morning treat with my coffee. Equally swooney.
I would like to experiment with making these a little more healthy. They are pretty sweet, so I think I could cut back the sugar by 1/2 or even 1/3 of a cup. I’d also like to try a mixture of wheat flour and possibly adding some other shredded veggies or even some pureed cooked spinach (don’t make a face, it works and you’ll never taste it). I think I could also add some kind of dried fruit or nuts – maybe cranberries or walnuts or even pecans would be good. Something to think about for next time.
I also think they’d be pretty good topped with a mixture of natural sugar and cinnamon before baking. It would give the top a nice crunchy finish and would work well if the sugar in the recipe was cut back.
Spicy Pumpkin Muffins
Wet Ingredients:
1 15oz can solid pack pumpkin
2 large eggs
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/8 tsp ground cloves
grating of fresh nutmegDry Ingredients:
1.5 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp saltpreheat oven to 350deg F
Whisk together all the wet ingredients in a medium bowl until smooth.
Whisk together all the dry ingredients in a separate bowl until well combined.
Fold dry ingredients into wet ingredients, mixing gently by hand. Do not overmix. It’s ok if the batter is lumpy. It will all bake out in the end, I promise.
Divide batter among muffin cups and bake until puffed and golden brown and wooden pick or skewer inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean, 35-40 minutes.
Cool in pan on a rack 5 minutes, then transfer muffins from pan to rack and cool completely before packaging and storing.
Makes 16 muffins.
