Pumpkin Oat Surprise
The original recipe called for pumpkin dolloped with apricot preserves, but I didn’t have any on hand, so I tucked a pitted date into each muffin instead. It added a burst of soft sweet taste in the centre of each. Particularly fantastic served warm with 2 wedges of laughing cow cheese.
I modified this recipe a bit and doubled my test batch to make a standard tin of 12 plus 6 mega muffins (I was using up frozen pumpkin from this past week’s cooking). You could also make loaves instead; just reduce the temperature to 350F and extend the cooking time to 60 minutes.
- 1¼ cups flour
- 1 Tbs baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 tsp pie spice (or ¼ tsp mix of cinnamon, all spice, nutmeg and ginger)
- 1 cup rolled oats (not the quick kind), ground into the texture of cornmeal (optional)
- 1 egg, plus one egg white (or 3 eggs if you double this)
- ¾ cup puree (pumpkin, butternut or sweet potato; your choice)
- ¼ cup brown sugar
- ¾ cup fat free vanilla yogurt
- ½ cup milk (or OJ if you prefer)
- 2 Tbs canola oil
- handful of pitted dates
First, to make your own puree is super simple! Peel (except for butternut squash – Jamie Oliver says it’s not worth the effort because the skin is so soft you can’t taste it in a puree), and cube; boil until tender, drain and puree in a food processor or blender. Takes about 20 minutes and the portions can easily be cooled and frozen for future uses … like this recipe in August 🙂
- Preheat the oven 400F and prepare a muffin tin.
- In large bowl, combine flour, oats, baking powder, salt, and spices. In separate bowl, lightly beat eggs with brown sugar; add pumpkin, yogurt, milk, and oil. Mix thoroughly.
- Fold wet into dry. Fill muffin cups to ¾ full and push a date into the centre of each.
- Bake 20-25 min. Cool 5 min before removing the muffins from the tin and then cool completely on a rack.
