Sugar and Spice: Pumpkin Muffins

I have decided I would really like to blog more about the things I make.  As in...FOOD!!  :)  Today, I am making pumpkin muffins.  This is my sister's recipe that she adapted from a recipe she had.  This time around, I mildly adapted the same recipe due to the fact that I had no baking chips (chocolate, butterscotch, or otherwise).  What I did have was a semi-sweet chocolate baking bar.  I thought I'd just put it in the magic bullet and chop it into pieces.  What I ended up with was more like a fine powder with some chip-sized chunks.  I must say, they taste amazing.  I'm thinking it can't be a bad thing to have powdered chocolate floating throughout the muffins!

Here's the finished product...

Pumpkin Muffins


Ingredients:
2 (15 oz) cans pumpkin puree
1 egg
1/3 c. vegetable oil
2 c white sugar
3 1/2 c all-purpose flour
2 t baking soda
1 1/2 t salt
1 t ground cinnamon
1 t ground nutmeg
1/2 t ground cloves
1/4 t ground ginger
chocolate chips (or cinnamon, peanut butter, butterscotch or anything other kind of chips!)

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease muffin tins.  (you can also make bread in which case you would grease and flour three 7"x3" loaf pans.

2. In a large bowl, mix together pumpkin puree, egg, oil, and sugar until well blended.  (if you're going for the effect I had with the powdered chocolate, add it in to this mixture too!)  In a separate bowl, whisk flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger.  Stir the dry ingredients into pumpkin mixture until just blended.  Pour into muffin tins.

3. Bake 25-30 minutes (50 minutes for loaves) or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Pretty muffin hint:  Use an ice cream scoop to fill your muffin tins.  This way, they all come out even and you don't have drips all over the tins.  I saw this on a morning news show where they were showcasing one of those cupcake companies and it seemed to work for me!

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