Fall is seriously my favorite time of year....the weather gets cooler making it easier to do more outside, the trees start changing color and out come the warm up your soul foods; soups, stews, baked dishes and delicious baked goods. One of foods that I get super excited about come Fall is the pumpkin...ah who am I kidding....I love me some pumpkin all year round. Fall just allows me to use it more often!
I love cutting, roasting and pureeing our pumpkins after Halloween each year. Even though it is quite a time consuming process it is totally worth it to package it up in freezer bags. Then I have fresh pumpkin to use in whatever we'd like throughout the year to come!! Soups, pies, cookies, muffins, beer...the list goes on and on!! Yummy!!
Thought I'd share with you all one of my favorite pumpkin muffin recipes...super easy and tasty tasty! When you make them mini they are almost like mini baked pumpkin doughnut holes...except healthier!!
mmmmmm!Preheat oven to 350F
3 Eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups Brown Sugar
1 Tbsp Vanilla
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 cup fresh pureed pumpkin or canned
1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup quick oats
1 1/2 tsp pumpkin spice
3-5 Tbsp cinnamon sugar (for coating)
Directions:
Mix together Eggs, Oil, Sugar, Vanilla & Pumpkin together in a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl mix together Salt, Baking Powder, Flour, Quick Oats & Pumpkin Spice. Once dry ingredients have been combined slowly mix them into the wet ingredients until fully combined but don't over mix.
Spoon mixture into well oiled mini muffin tins. Bake for approx. 12 min or until cake tester comes out clean. Allow to cool in pans for 3-5 min before running a knife around the edges and popping them out. Put them into a gallon zip lock bag with cinnamon sugar. I put 12 in at at time and gentle toss to coat. Add additional cinnamon sugar if needed as you work through coating the muffins.
Cool on a drying rack.
*Makes approx. 48 mini muffins. These freeze wonderfully and are great to pop out of the freezer and into a lunch bag! Recipe adapted from King Arthur.
