Tuesdays with Dorie—Pumpkin Muffins

These Pumpkin Muffins have lots of ingredients to please all sorts of taste buds: the crunch of the pecans and sunflower seeds, the soft chew of the raisins, and the spice from the cinnamon/ginger/nutmeg/allspice blend. Although the ingredient list is long, it only requires two bowls: one for the dry ingredients and the other for all the rest, and it goes together fast. These muffins are inspired by the famous pumpkin muffins at Sarabeth's Kitchen in New York.

Dorie on pumpkin: "If this vegetable were getting its kindergarten report, it would get an A for 'playing well with others.' I confess that my pumpkin doesn't come from the patch, but right off the supermarket shelves. I always used canned purée (not pie filling, which is already spiced) and always have a couple of cans in the cupboard because a craving can strike long after—or long before—the proverbial frost is on the pumpkin." 

Have you ever taken something you shouldn't? A cookie from the grocery store that are set out to keep the kids quiet long enough to do your grocery shopping in record speed? An extra sample from the Costco ladies saying it's for your child knowing full well they won't like it? A magazine from your Doctor's office? Confession time: For this Pumpkin Muffin recipe, I used the mini ketchup containers from McDonald's! I didn't take very many, but enough to make some one-bite muffins. You could play around and use cookie cutters to bake them in as I did for my Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins. Also, I had extra pumpkin pie filling from my Pumpkin Chai Tart so I used that instead of the unsweetened pumpkin purée suggested in the recipe. Doing this added a touch of chai and coconut to the mix, which was nice. Recipe You can find the recipe for Pumpkin Muffins in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or here. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger! Thanks to Kelly from Sounding My Barbaric Gulp who chose the recipe for this week. Tasting Notes I loved these pumpkin muffins. They were best fresh from the oven, but I've been enjoying several since then too. 

Recipe for Next Week (October 28) Chocolate-Chocolate Cupcakes on pages 215-217 chosen by Clara from I Heart Food4Thought. Gift Giveaway Winner Thanks to everyone for leaving a comment on last week's TWD post! I used Random.org and the first number in the sequence that it generated was 54. So, #54 was Annette from Bun in the Oven. Annette, thanks for dropping by! I'll be in touch about the 1-year subscription to Bon Appétit magazine. Congratulations!