Almost scared the pajamas off of me, but the baby was so proud of herself,
feeding tea biscuits to the monkey's nose. And her little game kept her busy
while we baked a little while later.
You see, 'tis the season for pumpkins. And since Josh was gone for so long at
shul this morning, we made pumpkin muffins. And mini muffins. And a pumpkin
bread. All from one recipe. Does it get better than that? Not from one 15 ounce
can of pumpkin, that's for sure.
my uncle's wedding. In 1987. All the other kids were running around but my Bobby
Toby and I were sitting at the kiddie table, inhaling pumpkin muffins. My Bobby
Toby is no longer with us but for years, we had tried to recreate the same
delicious muffins we had had in 1987. And we couldn't. I think my Bobby's
problem was that she didn't bother to look for a recipe, she just winged it. I,
on the other hand, was always trying to make a "healthy" pumpkin muffin,
following different recipes, with flax seed and whole wheat flour. Then I pulled
out my old pumpkin bread recipe that I always tried to play around with and instead of using weird ingreidents, I just replaced some of the sugar with less sugar
and switched the margarine for oil.
Instead of using the three cups of sugar that the recipe listed, I used two. Still awful, I know. But one taste of these muffins and I was back in California with my Bobby Toby, wearing my burgundy colored crushed velvet dress with white tights and shiny black mary-janes. And a matching velvet headband with a bow. Stuffing muffins into my mouth. Memories. These are deliciously unhealthy and definitely a once-in-a-blue-moon treat. Today must be a blue moon kinda day.
1 15ounce can of pureed pumpkin, not pie filling
2 cups sugar
1 cup water or soy milk
1 cup oil
4 eggs
3 and 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease whatever pans you'd like to use. I
used one loaf pan, one muffin pan with 12 spaces, and one mini muffin pan with
24 spaces.
In a bowl of a standing mixer (or by hand), mix the sugar, soy milk or
water, oil, eggs and pumpkin. Add the dry ingredients and mix until combined.
Pour half the batter into the loaf. Start baking the loaf pan right away because
that pan takes the longest, at about 50 minutes, but start checking it at 30
minutes to be sure the top isn't burning. I tented my loaf pan with foil at the
35 minute mark and left it like that until it was done, about 15 minutes later.
Then pour the batter into the mini muffin tin and bake that on the other
rack. These take the shortest, coming in at about 11 minutes. Next fill the
regular sized muffin pan, move it to side and wash the dirty bowl and spoons. By
now the mini muffins should be done and the regular sized muffins can go in. The
regular sized ones took about 18 minutes to bake.
Let cool and eat. Or store in a Ziploc bag on the counter. Or wrap in foil
and stick in a labeled freezer bag and freeze. All good options. And just think
how lucky we are to have freezer bags to keep the food we work so hard on from
getting freezer burn. There were no dedicated freezer bags in 1987. That's why
we had to eat all those muffins. We were really just doing a service to the
hostess.