Pumpkin Muffin Mania!

A couple weeks ago my sister sent me some brioche-shaped muffin tins that came with a recipe for pumpkin muffins (from Barracks Road Shopping Center in Charlottesville, Virginia). At the time there was a canned pumpkin drought at all of the local grocery stores, but luckily Trader Joe's has stepped it up (as usual) and now is fully stocked with canned pumpkin. Today I set about making my pumpkin muffins. Below is the original recipe, and I'll also tell you about the changes I made and the variations I tried.

PUMPKIN MUFFINS

Makes 2 dozen muffins

Ingredients

• 3 large eggs
• 2 cups canned pumpkin puree
• 1/2 cup golden raisins
• 1 cup vegetable oil (soy or canola)
• 1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

• 3 cups unbleached, all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp ground cloves
• 3 cups granulated sugar
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon

Combine all ingredients in the first group above. Sift together all the dry ingredients in the second group. Mix wet ingredients into sifted dry ingredients. Bake in greased molds or muffin tins lined with papers. Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes or until the muffins spring back when touched lightly.

My changes:

Ingredients

• 3 large eggs
• 2 cups canned pumpkin puree (I used 2 cans because I read this wrong)
• 1/2 cup golden raisins (I skipped these)
• 1 cup vegetable oil (soy or canola) - (I used 3/4 cup organic, unsweetened apple sauce and 1/4 cup vegetable oil)
• 1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts (skipped in the main recipe but added in later)

• 3 cups unbleached, all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp ground cloves
• 3 cups granulated sugar (I used 2 cups sugar and 1 cup granulated cooking Splenda)
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon

Organic pumpkin from Trader Joe's:

* This is a good example of why you should always read a recipe all the way through before starting, and you should always read it carefully! I used 2 cans instead of 2 cups - a major measurement error like this could mess up a lot of recipes, but luckily these still came out great, and were very moist!

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

All of the wet ingredients (first group of ingredients in list) in the mixing bowl:

All of the wet ingredients mixed together:

Sifting the dry ingredients (second group of ingredients in list):

All of the dry ingredients sifted into large mixing bowl:

Instead of making the entire batch of muffins with golden raisins and walnuts as the original recipe suggested, I divided my batter into fourths so that I could try some different variations.

The first: Chocolate Chips (used about 2 small handfuls)

The second: Craisins (also used about 2 small handfuls)

The third: Craisins and Chopped Walnuts (1 or 2 handfuls of each)

I saved the remaining fourth to be good old plain pumpkin.

All 24 muffins read to go into the oven:

I baked at 350 degrees for just under 20 minutes. I checked them at 15 minutes and 18 minutes, and took them out when a toothpick inserted into a muffin came out clean.

After making the 24 cupcakes, I still had extra batter (probably because I almost doubled the amount of canned pumpkin!). Pat requested that I make them with extra cinnamon and sugar.

I used the brioche-shaped tins that came with the recipe for these. I coated each tin with baking spray before filling with batter (baking spray is similar to cooking spray, but it also has flour in the spray to prevent breads from sticking).

And once they came out of the oven:

These were quite easy to remove from the tins. I just turned them over and they fell out!

All of the other muffins, ready to eat!