It’s the Time of the Season for Pumpkin

I was happily surprised to see organic pumpkin in the grocery store this week. Baking with pumpkin is fantastic–absolutely love it. I have three goodies in my repertoire which highlight the magical taste and texture of the gourd:

1. Pumpkin pie
2. Pumpkin bread
3. Pumpkin chocolate-chip muffins

Now I don’t exactly have the time to make all of these right now–#1 in particular takes the longest. Moreover, it’s not exactly cold down here right now, and I always associate #2 with cold weather. So, by process of elimination: behold the recipe and pictures for pumpkin chocolate-chip muffins.

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Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 cup canned pumpkin (NOT pumpkin pie mix)
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips (or really, as much as you want)
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 1/5 cups all purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• Ground cloves
• Ground cinnamon
• Ground nutmeg
• (Optional–I rarely use it) Ground Ginger
• Salt

Instructions:

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Take your muffin tray and spray it with Pam (or a similar product).
2. Take a large mixing bowl and combine sugar, eggs, oil, water, and pumpkin. In a separate bowl, mix all other dry ingredients (be careful with the spices–they’re there just to flavor the pumpkin, and you can always add more!).
3. Mix the dry ingredients into the bowl with the wetter ingredients. Once you have an appropriately spiced orange mixture, stir in the chocolate chips.
4. Pour batter into muffin tray. Bake until done–takes about 20 minutes.

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Results:

mmmm...tasty