If you have pumpkin puree left over from the pumpkin butter or any other recipe, this is a good way to use it up. As muffins, these have only about half the sugar of typical pumpkin cupcakes or pumpkin quickbread baked in a muffin pan. Like all muffins, they’re fast and simple, no appliances needed. And while the classic combination of chocolate and peanut butter is divine, this is a close second for me, along with cranberries and dark chocolate.
My mom used to make these and I use a 1/4 cup disher, or ice cream scoop, as she did to fill the liners; you’ll get a dozen muffins that way. Sometimes I can’t resist making them just a wee bit bigger for 10 or 11 muffins. These are a fine accompaniment to coffee, tea or milk but they’re a natural autumn partner to apple cider.
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins
3/4 cup/150g sugar
1 1/2 cups/186g all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
3/4 cup/180g pumpkin puree, packed
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup/90g semisweet chocolate chips
Set a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 400 degrees/ 200 C/ Gas 6. Grease or spray a standard 12-cup muffin tin or line with paper liners.
In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients, except the chocolate chips, and mix well to distribute. Set aside.
In a medium bowl, combine the lightly-beaten eggs and the pumpkin puree. Beat with a spoon until well-combined. Add the oil and water and beat until smooth.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir until well-combined. Fold in the chocolate chips.
Fill the muffin tins with about 1/4 cup of batter in each. Bake 18 – 24 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. [These need 20 minutes in my oven ~ ella]
Let cool in the pan 5 minutes, then transfer to a rack to cool completely.
Yield: 12 muffins
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OK. So the last batch of cranberry orange nut muffins I made came out like…. rocks. They didn’t rise a bit even though I followed the recipe to the tee.
What am I doing wrong? I mixed it as little as possible, but it looked thick and gooey. Did I not add enough wet ingredients (in this case oj and eggs) to make the dough thinner, and therefore requiring less mixing?
Help!
It’s hard to say without seeing the list of ingredients. It’s fine if you want to post it, but there’s no need for the directions.
Off the top of my head, the most likely questions are:
1) Is your baking powder still good?
2) What brand of flour did you use?
3) How did you measure it? Dip and scoop, lightly spoon, something else?
Oooooooooh! How long DOES baking powder last? THAT may be the problem. Oh boy.. it’s exp. date is 2007. Ok then.
I used a measuring cup, even though I have wonderful stainless steel cups for measuring flour. Doah!
I used King Arthur unbleached bread flour….. that just sounds wrong. LOL!
What’s your take?
I’m gonna try making muffins again this weekend. I have some cranberries left, so I gotta use them.
OMG, no wonder! You have 2 MAJOR problems going on. First, replace the baking powder, please. See my post about baking powder here.
Second, bread flour is for bread. Only. And King Arthur’s all-purpose flour is almost as strong as bread flour, so it’s going to give you very dense and heavy baked goods. Another brand would work better. Please see my post from last year called Flours, water and Pie Crusts to learn about protein in flour and why you use certain ones for certain things.
Glass measuring cups are for liquids only. If you must use measuring cups, as opposed to weighing flour, lightly spoon the flour into the metal cup and use the back of a butterknife to level it off. Don’t scoop, don’t tap it against the counter. That’s especially important with King Arthur flour.
It’s often said cooking is an art, baking is science. It’s really true. It’s chemistry. Let me know how the next batch goes!
Yeah, I feel pretty stupid right now. I AM new to baking I must confess. I can make a great pie, be it apple or sweet potato, but I really would love to learn how to make muffins and pound cake…..uuuuhhhhh poounnnd caaaake (insert photo of homer simpson drooling here).
So, please be patient; I’m a novice.
I did not know you had to “weigh” flour. I always see people scooping it out and shaving the top off with a knife…using stainless cups just like mine.
OK. Let me read up on this new info as well as your links and I’ll let you know how they turn out.
But now, it’s time for a truffle! ;o)
Don’t feel stupid, Violet. Nobody is born knowing how to bake. I’ve made every mistake possible, some more than once, so there’s probably nothing a novice could do that I haven’t done. And pies are harder than muffins so you’re halfway there.
If you’re not going to bake a lot, cherish your metal measuring cups but do spoon the flour into the cup unless you know it’s a recipe by another scooper, such as Martha. That’s about a 5-ounce cup of flour instead of the 4 1/4 ounces of a cup filled by spooning the flour into it.
There are a several advantages to weighing: professional recipes are all by weight, the results are more precise and consistent when making recipes more than once, it’s faster and easier and no cups to wash and — and it’s a big “and” — if you’re going to try recipes from the Internet, you’ll be free to use any of them. There are only 4 countries in the world not on the metric system – us, Burma, Liberia and Myanmar. Everybody else measures flour and sugar by weight.
I can’t tell you how much I hate the American system of volumetrics, especially with people filling their cups of flour so many different ways. It’s asking for trouble.
I have all the patience in the world and I look forward to hearing how the next batch of muffins goes. If you want to branch out from the cranberry muffins, this very recipe is really good and so is the blueberry muffin recipe I included when writing about silicone muffin cups. (save your money, I hate them)
So all of your advice was on Ella…. muffins came out great. At least fluffy and light….actually, really nice. I made some cranberry and orange and nut again….. and they were perfect. Next…. the blueberry. Not so scary after all.
Brava, Violet, well done! Thanks for letting me know. Yep, muffins are not scary at all. Next thing we know, you’ll be whipping up cupcakes.
This is a great recipe! I didn’t have the seperate spices so I used a teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice and instead of just water I added carrot juice. Thanks.
Hi, Whitney! I’m so happy you liked it and your idea of carrot juice is inspired. I’ll be borrowing that from you! Thanks so much for taking the time to come back and let me know how it went. I hope to “see” you here again.