The Best Ever Pumpkin Muffins

Catherine,

So most of the recipes I've posted thus far have been blatantly someone else's or a combination of two recipes. This recipe, I feel, is more my own. Last year for a Christmas party, I sat down and combined all of my favorite things from about six (maybe more) different pumpkin bread recipes. These are the result. Now, I know you're trying to stay away from eggs (and this recipe has 4...) but maybe you can do some creative cooking of your own and find some decent substitutes? I've browsed some vegan blogs for just that purpose, and it seems that people have come up with all sorts of decent alternatives. This website seems to be pretty exhaustive in its suggestions. I think the key thing is to figure out just what role eggs are playing in your baking. It suggests bananas or pumpkin as a replacement in muffins and bread, so maybe you don't even need them here because there's so much pumpkin already? If you try out an alternative, I'm very curious as to the result. 

I made these muffins without the glaze and without chocolate chips. I just love the taste of pumpkin (or maybe all the spices...) that I don't like to cover it up. I also don't tend to love food that is overly sweet. On the other hand, I've made these with glaze and/or chocolate chips, and they're still unbelievably awesome: they make you want to see a dentist.

Love and stuff,
Kimberly 

Pumpkin Bread

Makes ~30 muffins or one huge loaf or 3 little loaves

2 c sugar 
½ c butter 
4 eggs 
15 oz can pumpkin 
½ c applesauce   
1 tsp. vanilla 
⅔ c water
3 ½ c flour 
2 tsp baking soda 
1 ½ tsp salt 
1 ½ tsp cinnamon 
1  tsp nutmeg 
½ tsp cloves  
¼ tsp ground ginger
¼ tsp allspice 
12 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease and flour three 7x3 inch loaf pans (or line 18 muffin cups).
2. In a mixer, cream together sugar and butter. Then mix in eggs, pumpkin puree, apple sauce, vanilla, and water until well blended. 
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves ginger, and allspice. Stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended. (Stir in chocolate chips.)
4. Pour into the prepared pans. Bake loaves for about 50 minutes (16-18 minutes for muffins). Loaves are done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
5. Glaze muffins once cool.

Glaze

1 Tbs melted butter
1 dash milk
1 dash vanilla
1 c powdered sugar (or enough to make correct consistency --- just keep adding sugar till glaze isn't runny)

Beat it all together. Spread or drizzle onto cooked bread/muffins. 

Tips

-If you make one big loaf, it takes FOREVER to cook. We were late to the aforementioned Christmas party because it just wouldn't finish. I prefer to make cupcakes because they're much more predictable. And cleaning is minimized when you use cupcake liners!

- I haven't figured out the best way to store these. The tops get a little soggy when they're in a closed container. Maybe there's too much moisture in the batter? I just don't know. Maybe putting a stale piece of bread in the container will pull some of the moisture from the air? (This words really really well in reverse for cookies. If you have a tin of cookies that have gotten too hard/stale, throw in a piece of un-stale bread, and the cookies will steal moisture from it. You're left with a rock hard piece of bread and perfect cookies.)