Hey everyone! It's November, and for the last month everyone has been raving about Pumpkin Spice Lattes and pumpkin ice cream and pumpkin bread and pumpkin EVERYTHING. I have been meaning to try pumpkin in my chocolate Shakeology, so yesterday I busted it out. Of course, I bought the huge cans of pumpkin at Costco and only needed 3/4 cup scoop for my shake. So afterwards I went on a mission to find a recipe for healthy, but still moist and delicious, pumpkin muffins.
I used to make pumpkin muffins by mixing 1 small can of pumpkin into one box of spiced cake mix. These come out DELICIOUS, but as you can probably guess, they are not the healthiest thing for you ;) After much searching, I finally came across a recipe at Cookie and Kate. You can find the link to the blog *
here* I picked this recipe because not only did I have everything I needed on hand, but they are all things that I usually keep on hand. I hate buying specific baking items for things I will only use occasionally. I will say that I don't *think* I used whole wheat flour. I had some flour in an unmarked bag in my pantry. I knew it wasn't regular white flour, and it didn't smell like almond or coconut flour. But it wasn't dark like whole what flour either. My best guess is that it was bread flour. Either way, I used 1 cup of the mystery flour and 3/4 cup of regular white flour. Next time I will try with whole wheat flour and white flour mixed. These muffins are moist enough that I am sure they would be good with all whole wheat flour if you wanted.
Ok, so here is the recipe. I hope you guys enjoy it as much as we did!!
(click on the link above for a printer friendly version and to see the original recipe and variations and other ideas)
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Maple-Sweetened Pumpkin Muffins with Oats
- ⅓ cup melted coconut oil or extra-virgin olive oil
- ½ cup maple syrup or honey
- 2 eggs*, at room temperature
- 1 cup pumpkin purée
- ¼ cup milk of choice (I used almond milk)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon, plus more for sprinkling on top
- ½ teaspoon ground ginger
- ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
- ¼ teaspoon allspice or cloves
- 1¾ cups whole wheat pastry flour or regular whole wheat flour
- ⅓ cup old-fashioned oats, plus more for sprinkling on top
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit (165 degrees Celsius). If necessary, grease ten cups of your muffin tin with butter or non-stick cooking spray (my pan is non-stick and didn’t require any grease).
- In a large bowl, beat the oil and maple syrup or honey together with a whisk. Add eggs, and beat well. Mix in the pumpkin purée and milk, followed by the baking soda, vanilla extract, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and allspice or cloves.
- Add the flour and oats to the bowl and mix with a large spoon, just until combined. If you’d like to add any additional mix-ins, like nuts, chocolate or dried fruit, fold them in now.
- Divide the batter evenly between the ten muffin cups. For these muffins, it’s ok to fill the cups a little higher than you normally would. Sprinkle the tops of the muffins with a small amount of oats, followed by a sprinkle of cinnamon. Bake muffins for 23 to 26 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into a muffin comes out clean. Place the muffin tin on a cooling rack. These muffins are delicate until they cool down (you have been warned!), so it’s best to wait until they have cooled down to remove them from the tin. You might need to run a butter knife along the outer edge of the muffins to loosen them from the pan. Enjoy muffins as is or with a spread of nut butter or regular butter.
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PS- I did the calculations to try and get container counts for the 21 Day Fix. It is not supposed to be really complex and crazy, so I did my best guess. I am going to call it 1/4 purple, 1 yellow, and 1 tsp. per muffin. Mathematically speaking, I might be overestimating the container counts so it very well could be only 1/2 yellow per muffin. But these muffins are so delicious it's hard for me to call it anything less than a whole yellow. I will give you the per muffin measurements below, please feel free to comment if you think the container counts should be different.
Per muffin:
1.5 tsp. coconut oil
2.5 tsp. maple syrup
1/5 egg
1.5 Tbsp. pumpkin
1.2 tsp. milk
3 Tbsp. flour
1.5 tsp. oats
(spices, etc. are negligible)
