Pumpkin or sweet potato muffins (p. 635) and Pumpkin bread (p. 628)

I was hungry for muffins after the delicious blueberry muffins that I made in January. They were delicious and heated up really well. I didn't have any blueberries but I did have a can of pumpkin that I picked up on sale at Wal-Greens (strange, I know). I decided to make Pumpkin or sweet potato muffins (p. 635).

Easy start, with a couple more ingredients than the blueberry muffins--I mixed flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg in one bowl and eggs, cream, brown sugar, butter, pumpkin, pecans, and vanilla. Quite a few ingredients!





The flour mixture was quickly mixed into the wet ingredients--the batter shouldn't be overbeaten and should still be lumpy.



The batter was then ladled into the muffin pan--this time I used a cookie scoop and it was perfect (easy!).



They weren't quite as pretty as the blueberry muffins but they looked okay.




The pumpkin muffins were good! Moist, tasty, and the pumpkin wasn't overpowering. They didn't have that pumpkin pie taste that most pumpkin-based baked goods seem to have (and I don't like pumpkin pie). Unfortunately, Josh doesn't like pumpkin, so these didn't all get eaten before they went stale.


I wanted to use all the pumpkin because I knew the excess would rot in the fridge (although I do have an awesome pumpkin crepe cake with maple cream recipe that I actually developed myself!) so I decided to make a second pumpkin dish--Pumpkin bread (p. 628). I did realize that my day of pumpkin was incredibly out of season but that's probably why the pumpkin was on sale.

Flour, baking soda and powder, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves were mixed in one bowl while milk and vanilla were mixed in another bowl (cup in this case).



Butter and brown sugar were mixed until fluffy, two eggs were added, and then one cup of pumpkin...uh oh...

There wasn't an entire cup of pumpkin left--and I certainly didn't have any more in the cupboard. I figured there wasn't much I could do and steamrolled on, adding the pumpkin I did have to the mix.



The flour mixture was mixed in, with some raisins and pecans, and the dough was poured into a loaf pan.



It was baked for about an hour (until the ubiquitous toothpick came out clean):




The bread was tasty and hearty--much like banana or zucchini bread. My favorite thing about these heavy breads is that I can eat a slice or two for lunch and I'm full. The lessor amounts of pumpkin didn't seem to make much of a difference although I'm sure it would have been more moist with it.