A few weeks ago, fall started to happen. And pumpkin products, drinks at Starbucks (holy beJesus, best everrr) started popping up. I jumped on that pumpkin wagon like crazy and bought cans of the stuff, ready to make magic. Then I lost steam. Staring at my cupboards this past week, I realized fall past me by and we're now well into winter (Starbucks is now serving they're frooffy eggnog lattes and peppermint mochas! [shakes fist]). The problem remains: I still have my cans of pumpkin. So I'm PUMPKIN SUITING UP. It's time to use this mushy fruit until I can'ts use it no mo.
First on the pumpkin parade is muffins. I got this recipe from All Recipes.com and it was disturbingly simple. Disturbing because I don't trust things that are TOO easy. But they came out perfectly fine. I'm more of a cupcake gal myself so muffins are always a hit or miss with me. These were not as sweet as I expected but the chocolate chips make up for the lack of sugar in the batter itself. The original recipe calls for all the traditional pumpkin spices separately but I didn't have ground cloves - I only had pumpkin pie spice which is a combination of all the biggies: cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and ginger. I substituted that and added about double the amount of chocolate originally called for. What? I like chocolate.
They came out quite yummy but were especially good warm (melty chocolate!).
PUMPKIN CHOCOLATE CHIP MUFFINS
Adapted from AllRecipes.com, Submitted by: Donna
3/4 cup white sugar1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
3/4 cup canned pumpkin
1/4 cup water
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon pumpkin spice
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
