Epic Pumpkin and Spice Muffins Made with Fresh Pumpkin – GWC Mag

gwcmagSeptember 22, 2023045 views

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Because not everyone keeps a sourdough starter, I cut that ingredient from my Ultimate Pumpkin and Spice Muffins with Sourdough Discard recipe and adapted it to compensate for the missing starter. The results are delicious!

Notes on pumpkin and spice muffin ingredients

Fresh pumpkin (or squash) yields fresh flavor

Use either a sugar pie pumpkin or kabocha squash for these. Kabocha squash renders a richer orange color. I cook these whole in my pressure cooker in about 8 minutes, remove the seeds and purée the flesh in a food mill or food processor. You can also roast pumpkins or kabocha squash in the oven for approximately 45 minutes.

The taste of these pumpkin spice muffins makes the extra effort to cook fresh pumpkin or kabocha squash totally worth it. Plus you’ll have leftover purée for other recipes, such as pumpkin dal or pumpkin pasta.

Most kabocha squash have green skin but you may find red-orange as well

Cooked sugar pie pumpkin (left); raw pumpkin seeds and puréed pumpkin (right)

Toasted nuts add crunch

I toast mine as the oven heats up. If you do this, keep an eye on them; you don’t want them to burn. They toast in about 10 minutes in my oven as it heats up. Yours may require less time—or more.

When I run out of certain ingredients…

Don’t feel you have to take the additional steps I did for the batch of muffins pictured here! I had run out of a couple of things and “making” them was easier than going to the store to buy them. I’d have used store-bought, had I had any.

Out of brown sugar, I combined 1 cup of granulated sugar with 2 teaspoons of molasses. You don’t need this much for the recipe but I like to have a bit on hand so I make more brown sugar than I need. This keeps in a jar in the cupboard. (Go here for more info on how brown sugar is made.)

Granulated sugar plus molasses make brown sugar

I also ran out of whole wheat flour so I ground up some hard red wheat berries. You absolutely do not need to grind your own flour to reduce waste but if freshly ground flour sounds appealing to you (and it really does add a wonderful texture and flavor), go here for more info on my grain mills (yes, plural). And go here for more info on wheat berries.

Whole wheat flour ground from hard red wheat berries

Whole nutmeg grinds up quickly

I prefer whole nutmeg that I grind myself with a microplane. You can also buy nutmeg mills but a microplane works so fast, cleans up easily, costs less than a mill (generally) and you’ll use it for many other tasks. (Mine is very similar to this one.) Freshly ground nutmeg adds so much flavor to food that Alton Brown carries whole nutmeg and a grater with him at all times. So while you may not want to grind your own flour, you might want to grind nutmeg. It consumes so little time.

Freshly ground nutmeg from whole nutmeg seed

Bonus treat: Roast pumpkin seeds while the pumpkin spice muffins bake

I find kabocha squash seeds usually too thick for roasting. Pumpkin are perfect though. Simply toss them in a bit of olive oil, sprinkle with salt and any desired spices and roast while the muffins bake. Enjoy your additional healthy crunchy snack. Go here for the full recipe.

Muffins and roasted pumpkin seeds

Cooling muffins

Crumb shot

Freeze to enjoy later

These pumpkin and spice muffins keep well in the freezer—you may want to double the recipe. I store them in a cloth produce bag. Yes, plastic works really well for freezing food but it presents myriad issues—environmental and health. (Go here for more on freezing food without using plastic.)

The bag pictured below came from the leg of a favorite pair of linen pants that wore out beyond repair. The legs conveniently had drawstrings sewn in for the pants’ next life. This bag has started to finally wear out as well. I don’t freeze the muffins for long (a couple of weeks), mostly because I have only so much willpower.

Worn linen pants can make a great freezer bag