Pumpkin Oatmeal Muffins

It's fall. Which means it's PUMPKIN TIME!!

Until last year, I had never tasted pumpkin and had convinced myself I didn't like it. Then a friend made a few recipes with pumpkin and I loved every one of them!

We buy our pumpkins in the market here....they look like long squash. I cut the pumpkin in half, deseed, cook for about an hour or so, then scoop out the pumpkin and puree it with a little bit of water. One pumpkin can get me about 10 cups of pumpkin puree. I still had pumpkin in the freezer from last winter, so i decided to get my fall baking on this past weekend.

I've been wanting to make a pumpkin muffin, instead of just regular pumpkin bread. But I wanted to make the recipe a little healthier. All of the healthy recipes online included ingredients I can't get here and/or sounded too healthy to even taste good.

So I took my regular pumpkin bread recipe and tweaked it a little. I have to get my splenda from the states, so I never cook with it. I always use it just for my coffee. But I decided to splurge and use it in this recipe, and it worked really well!

Pumpkin Oatmeal Muffins:

1 1/4 cup flour

1/2 cup oats

3/4 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp nutmeg

2 1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking soda

1/3 tsp baking powder

1 Tbs ground flax seed

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup Splenda sugar blends (mine was a little closer to 1/3)

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup oil (plus 1 Tbs)

2 eggs

1 cup pumpkin puree

Preheat oven to 350 (175 C)

In large mixing bowl, combine all of your dry ingredients. Mix well.

Add pumpkin, oil, and eggs to dry mixture. Mix well.

Grease muffin pans. I used a 1/4 measuring cup to pour the batter into the muffin tins. They were about 2/3 full. I baked these for about 22 minutes....you might want to check these at 20 minutes. When a toothpick comes out clean, remove from oven.

Cool in muffin pans for about 5 minutes. Then use a knife to go around the edges to loosen the muffin. Then remove the muffins and allow to cool on a baking rack for about 10 minutes.

Makes about 15 muffins. You could also make this into bread if you wanted. 

These were REALLY good! Daniel said he couldn't taste the difference between this and the regular pumpkin bread recipe. The main change was decreasing the flour and adding in the oats. Also adding ground flax and Splenda. These are super moist, and taste really sweet! 

I was worried that the oatmeal would give it a strange texture, but you couldn't even tell it was in there. These may not be the healthiest pumpkin muffins, but they are really good tasting ones!

I also experimented a little when I made my granola bars. I like adding in nuts like cashews, almonds, and peanuts, but the nuts don't seem to mix that well with the granola mixture. So yesterday I decided to blend the nuts first, then just add them in. They weren't as chewy as normal, so next time I need to add a little bit more honey. But I like how they came out. One change I have made to the original recipe, is I also add almost 1/2 cup of peanut butter. And when I half the recipe, I use a 7X11 pan, because an 8X8 is too small. 

When you take the granola bars out of the oven, you can either freeze them first for about 45 minutes, or cool in the fridge for about an hour. Then take them out and cut them. Because it's cooler here now,  I leave these out, but during the summer, they always stay in the fridge. I think they're chewier that way. 

love

laura