Fall Favorites: Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins Recipe

As November draws to a close, pumpkin spice season has been in full swing for nearly two months. This season is drawn to a close at the end of November by American Thanksgiving, with the traditional pumpkin pie following the turkey and cranberry sauce.

This Thanksgiving will look much different in many households with family gatherings kept to a minimum or virtual. If you are entertaining or looking to pass around goodies to your neighbors, an entire pumpkin pie may be a bit much. Instead, pumpkin muffins are a great way to capture the holiday flavor, but share easily and separately. Or of course you can keep them all to yourself!

Recipe

As you’ve seen in this previous post, I really enjoy Sharon Shipley’s The Lavender Cookbook. In her autumn recipes section, she has a recipe for butterscotch pumpkin muffins. Her recipe concentrates more on the flavors of butterscotch and ginger, but my cupboard didn’t have much of either. I do, however, have a nice stash of chocolate chips and adore pumpkin-chocolate combos. I tailored the original recipe as follows:

• 1 cup pumpkin purée
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 pound unsalted butter (softened for mixing)
• 2 eggs or equivalent ground flaxseed
• 1/4 cup apple cider
• 1.75 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 heaped tablespoon ground lavender
• 2.5 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
• 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Let the butter soften overnight outside the fridge. Mix the butter, pumpkin, and brown sugar together, then add the egg and cider. Then stir in the rest of the ingredients, leaving the chocolate chips and walnuts for last. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 25 minutes. This recipe yields 16 muffins.

• 

• 

A Couple Notes

1. I tend to use flaxseed instead of eggs for baking. This is purely a personal choice to save the eggs for other dishes. The flaxseed equivalent of one egg is 1 tablespoon ground flaxseed mixed with 3 tablespoons water. This mixture has to sit for 10 minutes or until it is slightly gluey.
   
2. As much as I like Sharon Shipley’s cookbook, I do find that all the muffin recipes have too much salt. I’ve already reduced the salt content in my version listed above, but feel free to cut the salt altogether if you like.
   
3. Pumpkin pie spice is a mixture of ground cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, lemon peel, and cardamon. It is sold in American grocery stores particularly to be used for pumpkin pie. If you don’t have this mixture, I’d recommend using ground cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves.
   

• 

• 

Festive Pairings