Spiced Pumpkin Cranberry Oat Muffins
Makes 12
I don’t bake often because when I do, I tend to eat what I’ve made. These are delicious and also pretty good for you (as far as muffins go). Use freshly ground cardamom seeds and nutmeg for the best flavor. If you have some fresh cranberries around (and this is a good time of year to freeze them for later use), add a small handful to the recipe.
¾ cup organic cane sugar or Sucanat
1 ½ cups unbleached all purpose flour
½ cup whole wheat pastry or spelt flour
½ cup rolled oats
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
¾ cup soy or other nondairy milk
1 cup organic canned pumpkin or firm fleshed, cooked fresh squash
2 tablespoons canola or other neutral oil
1 teaspoon white or rice vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
½ teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
½ cup dried cranberries
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Spray regular sized muffin tins with cooking spray, or use nonstick tins or flexible silicon trays (which you put on a baking sheet).
Combine the sugar, flours, oats, salt, baking powder and soda in a large bowl. Stir well to combine.
In another bowl, mix the remaining ingredients except the cranberries. Stir until well mixed.
Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients, along with the cranberries, and stir well but quickly to combine. Over stirring muffins will make them tough. Spoon the batter into the muffin tins to fill about 2/3 of each cup.
Bake for 18 to 20 minutes until the muffins are golden brown and cooked in the middle. Let cool on a rack. Enjoy.
© 2006 The Veggie Queen™, Jill Nussinow, M.S., R.D
Is there a gluten free version? I have to be gluten free and I’m trying to go vegan at least three days a week.
Wow! I had a can of pumpkin that I wasn’t sure what to do with. Can’t even remember what I was searching for that had your Spiced Pumpkin Cranberry Oat Muffins recipe pop up. “Such a clever idea,” I thought, “I have all the ingredients; let’s give it a try.”
I could not have had a better result. Loved loved loved it. Comes together quickly and easily. Turns out I didn’t have any non-dairy milk on hand, but found a recipe online for rice milk, which worked out because I had some cooked rice in the fridge. Because I used homemade rice milk I did end up adding more sugar to the muffin mix to get it to the right sweetness, but I was okay with that.
Two things to note about the cooking:
1) Because there’s pumpkin in this you cannot go by your standard “If it’s this color, it’s done” mode because the pumpkin does color it and you might be mistaken.
2) Most of my batch I made in muffin/cupcake papers (because I was inordinately lazy and didn’t want to grease 12 muffin cups), and even now (the day after baking) the muffin sticks a lot to the papers–as in, it pulls the muffin apart if you’re not careful, and even if you are careful it still leaves a lot of muffin on the paper.
I still had some batter left after filling the 12-muffin tin so I pulled out my 6-muffin tin and made the final two, without the paper as the 6-muffin tine was nonstick. The two without the paper were much better. Now I don’t know if that’s down to the difference in the material of the tins or the use/non-use of the paper, but next time I will make them all in a non-stick tin without the paper.
Happy to hear that you made these and that you figured out what works for best for you. I don’t care much for the paper liners, just for the reasons you state. Muffin tins often work best.
Thank you for commenting.
to Toni:
You can often substitute applesauce (or pumpkin!) for oil in muffins and cakes. This recipe is less heavy than many already. Unless you need to eliminate the oil entirely, I’d keep at least 1 Tbsp in there for texture.
When I use this substitution (in other recipes, haven’t tried this one), I often have to bake the muffins longer, but I also remove all the refined sugar, which also changes the texture & cooking time.
Best wishes!