Liz's Pumpkin Spice Muffins

My most requested holiday recipe! I love to make a double batch and bring them to Thanksgiving Dinner or cook up a bunch just before Halloween. 

These are delicious nicely dense muffins adapted from a bread recipe. The combination of spices and pumpkin make them taste almost like pumpkin pie. You can use fresh cooked pumpkin instead of canned, just watch the moisture content as fresh pumpkin can be a wetter substitute. 

Pumpkin Spice Muffins

Makes 12 Big Muffins, 18 Medium muffins

1cup Sugar

1/2 cup Brown Sugar

1/2 cup Vegetable Oil

2 Eggs

1/2 can Pumpkin (I bag and freeze the remainder for a 2nd batch)

1 3/4 Cups Flour

1/4 cup Water (Use less for a denser muffin)

1/2 tsp Salt

1/2 tsp Cinnamon

1/2 tsp Nutmeg

1/2 tsp Baking Soda

1/4 tsp Baking Powder

1/4 tsp Cloves

1/4 tsp Allspice

1/4 tsp Ginger

Preheat Oven to 350.

Beat the eggs and blend into both white and brown sugar. Add in Pumpkin, Oil, water, and all the spices, finally working in the flour to a nice smooth mix.

Prep a muffin pan either with nonstick spray or muffin papers. I use a standard 12 Pan, for large muffins you fill each cup to just below the top, for medium muffins, fill the voids only halfway. (You'll need 2 pans to make 18 medium muffins)

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, checking with a toothpick for doneness. 

Simple Home-Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Home Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

It's Pumpkin Carving time! I've been told by several friends that they have trouble cooking pumpkin seeds, so I thought I'd jot down my method for others to use. :) I do have two disclaimers, I live at both high altitude, and in a VERY dry climate. I don't know if either of those factors can effect something like this, but if you don't achieve the results your hoping for, it may just require some tweaking on the bake time and temp.

Ingredients:

Fresh Pumkin seeds, right out of the gourd.

Salt

2 bowls

Colander

Paper towels

Cookie Sheet

Oven

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees F.

First off, getting the goo off the seeds can be a little tricky. Cut open the pumpkin and take everything out into a medium bowl. Once you have it all out where you can see it, separate the seeds from the threads into the second bowl, by hand. (You can wear gloves if the texture bothers you.)

Once you have all the seeds in the 2nd bowl, there are still usually threads of pumpkin and juice all over them. Fill the seed bowl halfway with water, and rinse the seeds, sifting through the water to remove the rest of the threads.

(by this point any pumpkin threads that you've missed really won't harm the process)

Pour seeds into colander and drain, shaking to get as much moisture off of them as possible.

Ready a layer of paper towels, then pour the seeds onto them, pat the water off to get most of the drops. (The seeds will often stick to the paper).

Transfer seeds to a cookie sheet, and remove them from the paper towel if stuck. Spread them across the sheet evenly. They can still touch,  just try to smooth them out so there aren't any stacked on top of each other.

Salt the seeds. You can use sea salt, or kosher salt, I just use table salt. Be generous. For one, salt helps absorb the moisture and give them a crisp outer shell, for two, it brings out the flavor. If you over-salt you can usually just rub it off after they've cooked.

Slide the cookie sheet in and bake for 5-10 minutes. Look for a dry, just barely golden color on the edges. The salt makes them pale, so you don't want to wait for too much color change.

Pop them out, scrape them off the sheet with a spatula, and eat as soon as they're cool!

Good luck! :)