Pumpkin Muffins
During the catering busy season at Glorious Foods, seventy-hour work weeks were common. On the rare day off, several of my kitchen colleagues and I would meet for a late breakfast at Sarabeth’s, a popular Upper West Side restaurant known for its American cuisine. They also featured very good basic bakery selections, and we would order a basket of scones and pumpkin muffins for the table.
It was my first exposure to the joys of this fall muffin, and I found that it paired beautifully with numerous breakfast foods. Sarabeth’s hadn’t published the recipe, so I was delighted to see this recipe in the book Wild About Muffins, by Angela Clubb. It’s a small book but with many excellent muffin ideas and recipes, several of which I adapted for use in Seven Layers.
This straightforward recipe follows the basic Muffin method; simply mix the dry and liquid ingredients in separate bowls, add the liquid to the dry and mix just until combined. Then scoop and bake. Gather all your mise en place (ingredients and tools) the night before to make life simple in the morning. Measure and mix the dry ingredients, measure the brown sugar and the raisins and place the muffin liners in the muffin cups.
When a pan of pumpkin muffins is placed in the oven, the fragrance from the cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger filling the kitchen may be reward enough for your efforts. But do eat them, they are absolutely delicious.
Pumpkin Muffins
| Yield: 9 standard sized | # of Servings: 9 | Method: Muffin |
Ingredients:
Dry ingredients:
- 2 cups (9.3 oz / 264 g) pastry or all-purpose flour
- 2 tsp (.4 oz / 11 g) baking powder
- ½ tsp (.10 oz / 2 g) baking soda
- ½ tsp (.10 oz / 2 g) salt
- ½ tsp ground cinnamon
- ½ tsp ground nutmeg
- ¼ tsp ground ginger
Liquid ingredients:
- 1 large egg, room temperature
- ⅔ cup (4.65 oz / 132 g) light brown sugar
- ⅓ cup (2.6 oz / 74 g) unsalted butter, melted
- ¾ cup milk, room temperature
- ¾ cup (6.4 oz/ 181 g) canned pumpkin
- ½ cup (2.55 oz / 72 g) golden raisins
Pumpkin seeds, as needed
Tools and equipment needed:
- One standard 12-cup muffin pan
- Standard size muffin liners
- 1.5 fl oz (#20 ice cream scoop)
Pre-recipe preparations:
- Place liners in muffin cups
- Melt butter until mostly liquid, then stir to complete melting
- Preheat oven to 400 °F
Directions
- Mix dry ingredients together in large mixing bowl.
- In medium mixing bowl using a whisk, lightly beat the egg. Add the brown sugar and beat until no lumps.
- Whisk in melted butter until combined.
- Add pumpkin puree and milk, whisk to combine. Stir in golden raisins.
- Make a well in the dry mixture, pour in liquid and fold together, just until combined. It is better to moisten any small pockets of flour individually (using a small spatula) then stirring the whole batter too much.
- Scoop into paper lined muffin cups. Top with pumpkin seeds.
- Bake just until firm and cake tester is clean, 20 to 22 minutes.
- Remove muffin pan from oven and place on heat-proof pad or surface. Wait two minutes and carefully remove muffins from pan to cooling rack.
- Serve warm or room temperature.
- Left-overs may be frozen.
