Pumpkin Spiced Muffins Recipe

It wasn't long ago I was telling you that summer was over, but Autumn really has arrived now and it's already restricting our daily activities. Doesn't the onset of bad weather make you wish you'd made more of your summer, no matter how much you did manage to cram in? My wife is American and she is certainly happier than I am to see October, given that she loves Halloween! Our house has been spookily decorated since October 1st, the kids have been dressed as skeletons and much like every food outlet we come across, we too have gone pumpkin mad. This week we took to baking our own pumpkin based treats and let Clayton join in where we could. He's still too young to fully grasp what's going on in the kitchen, except when something edible is passed under his nose but he still had a great time helping. We gave him an empty bowl and a whisk to make plenty of noise with. He loved putting the paper cases into the muffin tins too; stacking, unstacking and counting as he joined in the adult activity.

I loosened up on my diet rules when I got a smell of what was coming and I warn you not to partake if you're avoiding calories like the plague, because you won't be able to pass on these Autumnal treats. We made pumpkin spiced muffins and they were that good that I'm going to share the recipe with you. All I ask is the if you attempt them and they come out good, send one my way!

Pumpkin Spiced Muffins Recipe:

Ingredients:

200g Whole Wheat Flour

125g Plain Flour

1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinammon

1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

3/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon kosher salt

280g sugar

350ml vegetable/sunflower oil

120ml water

3 eggs

425g pureed pumpkin (canned variety is widely available)

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.

Combine flours and other dry ingredients (spices, soda and salt) in a large mixing bowl, stirring with a whisk as you go, before making a well in the centre of your dry mixture.

In a seperate bowl, combine your sugar, eggs, oil and water. Mix well with a whisk. Add your pumpkin to the same wet mix and whisk.

Pour your wet mix into the well you created in your dry mix and stir until all is combined and you have a smooth batter.

Divide your batter evenly among paper muffin cup liners in a muffin tray. Bake for 25 minutes.

At this point your muffins are ready to be eaten and are delicious when they're still warm. However, as we're in full Halloween mode in our household, we decided to let this batch cool and decorate in suitable fashion (and we had fun doing so!). We love to cook and bake in our family and as the kids grow older I look forward to including them more and more. The only disappointment as far as including our kids where baking is concerned from my perspective is that there is now competition for spoon and bowl licking!