Pumpkin Spice Muffins

I’ve been planning on making some Pumpkin Spice Muffins for a while now. I had a recipe all picked out and I THOUGHT I had all of the ingredients….turns out I needed more eggs than I had in the house. So I did some searching and found a recipe that I had almost all of the ingredients. Normally I don’t change recipes for baked goods (I’ll add things but not substitute). I ended up changing this one a little based on what I had on hand. The original recipe calls for whole grain pastry flour, unsulphered molasses, canola oil, buttermilk, and pumpkin seeds. I had enriched cake flour, apple sauce, peanut oil, 1% milk, and chopped walnuts. I thought I’d try to make it work with what I had on hand and they turned out great. They’re really moist, and not too sweet. I think I am going to try adding raisins, dried cranberries, or diced apples next time….maybe I’ll divide the batter into three batches and try all three to see which way works best.

Here’s a link to the original recipe…

(http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ellie-krieger/pumpkin-muffins-recipe/index.html)

Here is the recipe as I made it…

• Cooking spray (or you can use paper muffin tin liners)
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup enriched cake flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 3 tablespoons apple sauce
• 1/4 cup peanut oil
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup canned pumpkin
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup 1% milk
• 1/4 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Coat a 12-cup muffin pan with cooking spray or use paper lines like I did….what can I say…anything I can do to make clean-up faster;).

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flours, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg.

In a large bowl, whisk the sugar, apple sauce, oil and 1 egg until combined. Add the other egg and whisk well. Whisk in the pumpkin and vanilla. Whisk in the flour mixture in 2 batches, alternating with the milk. Whisk just until combined.

Pour the batter into the prepared muffin pan and sprinkle with the chopped walnuts (press them into the batter a little bit with your finger tip or the back of a spoon). Tap the pan on the counter a few times to remove any air bubbles. Bake for 20 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center of 1 of the muffins comes out clean.

Let cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Run a knife around the muffins to loosen them and unmold….unless you liners…then you can just remove them from the muffin tin and let them cool on the rack