Pumpkin Muffins

When I became a nutritarian nearly five years ago I missed baked goods the most. Especially around the holidays. It became even worse when I discovered I was sensitive to wheat and gluten because then I couldn’t even have whole wheat bread or pita.

But two years ago, after much searching, I discovered gluten free muffin recipes on Veg Food & Fit. I’ve adapted the recipes so they are completely consistent with nutritarian eating. As well as gluten free and vegan.

Two of these muffins are a great alternative to a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast. I made them for Thanksgiving and will have them again for Christmas.

In future posts I’ll share more muffin, scone and cookie recipes that I’ve tweaked from Wendy Gable Day’s website. If you don’t want to wait for the adaptations, check out her blog. Better yet, I noticed her cookbook is on sale for $10 with free shipping and the e-book is available for free download as a pdf.

Happy Baking!

Ingredients

Dry

• 3 cups gluten free rolled oats ground into flour
• 1 T sodium free baking powder
• 1 t cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 2/3 cup raisins

Wet

• 1/2 cup walnuts
• 1/2 cup vanilla soy milk (or other non-dairy milk)
• 1 cup pumpkin puree (or ½ 15 oz can)*
• 1 apple, core removed, sliced in quarters
• 1/4 cup dates (4 deglet noor or 2 medjool)
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/4 cup maple syrup**

Directions

1. Mix the oat flour, baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg in a bowl. Set aside.
2. Blend the walnuts and soymilk in Vitamix or other powerful blender
3. Add pumpkin, apple, dates, maple syrup and water and blend until smooth. Will be consistency of thick smoothie.
4. Mix wet ingredients into the dry ones.
5. Stir in raisins. Batter will be thick
6. Mist 12-muffin pan with oil
7. Fill muffins cups with batter
8. Bake at 375 degrees for 30-40 minutes until done

Yield: 12 muffins

* I like to double the recipe & freeze extra muffins (you can also freeze the pumpkin, thawing overnight the next time you want to make another batch of muffins. Alternatively, try this recipe:

Pumpkin Pie Smoothie (Serves 2)

• 3-4 deglet noor dates (or 1-2 medjool)
• 1 cup vanilla soy milk
• 1 cup pumpkin puree (or ½ 15 oz can)
• 1 banana (can use a frozen one)
• 1/8 tsp each: allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger
• 1 cup ice cubes

Blend all ingredients in a Vitamix or blender

**To make muffins completely fruit sweetened replace maple syrup with another 1/4 cup dates plus 1/4 cup water or use 1/2 cup date syrup for maple syrup, dates and water.

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Note:  This post is my second post in my own personal 30-day holiday blog challenge. Yesterday, I saw a post by my photographer friend Sara Wilbur on facebook about how she decided to participate in a 30-day blog challenge after initially thinking ‘not. a. chance.’ I thought the same thing. Not during the holidays! But I missed the November, Blog Her 30 day challenge, which my story-telling, parent-tip-of-the-day writing friend Mosa(of boobjuice) mentioned on Sunday. I thought to myself, “I wish I’d heard about that.” Out of curiosity, I read Tim King’s blog about the challenge:

So I was going to wait until a certain day to start this challenge, and then I realized that when you make a plan to “start” something on a certain date, it never really ends up carrying through.

So I’m starting now.  Whether or not I’m “completely ready” – it’s full throttle.

That’s as far as I read before I started writing my first post since October. I realized I was in, at least unofficially, even if I wasn’t a photographer.

Today, I decided to make it official with this note. I invite you to to join in. Sensual dance bloggers. Pole dance bloggers. Writer bloggers. New bloggers. And for missed days, I’ll find someone or something to feature, as Tim suggests. And if you join me, you can pick your posts for me to feature as Tim suggests for the days I miss! Unlike Tim’s, my posts will count even if they’re posted after noon.

And if you’re on the fence. Listen to Lose Yourself by Eminem before you decide. It just might help you seize the opportunity!

Tags: Baking, Gluten Free, Muffins, Pumpkin, Start Now 30-day blog challenge, Vegan