Now I'm home after my first year of college for another summer. A job at a restaurant and a clothing store isn't enough to keep me completely busy, so here I am.
Tonight, as I was eating my spaghetti dinner, I realized how badly I wanted a muffin. After running a couple ideas my dad, I decided to make a batch of applesauce muffins. After a scan of the fridge and the freeze, however, I found that our applesauce supply was far too low, so I took a turn to the pantry and found a can of pumpkin. I have a recipe for pumpkin bread (or really my mom does) that I love, but I don't think I had ever made muffins out of. I pulled it out of our wooden card catalog. Here it is.
Looch's Pumpkin Bread
3 C flour
3/4 t salt
2 t baking soda
1 1/2 t cinnamon
1 t nutmeg
1 t cloves
1/4 t allspice
3/4 C oil
2 1/4 c sugar
4 eggs
16 oz. pumpkin
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine flour, salt, soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and allspice in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, mix oil, sugar, eggs, and pumpkin. Add wet to dry. Makes two loaves that bake for 45-50 minutes.
I had my first problem right away. My can of pumpkin was 15, not 16 ounces, but I figured what little apple sauce I had could easily fill that last ounce. I started with the dry ingredients and, as is my custom, was pretty loose with how I measured everything out. I usually just dip my measuring cup into my big container, of flour, of sugar, of anything. When it comes out heaping, I take a little less for the next scoop. When it comes a little scarce, the next is heaping. With flour, salt, and soda in, I went to the spice cabinet to grab everything, only to find that we didn't have any ground cloves. No problem, though, as there re some whole ones, so I pulled out my mortar and pestle and went with my go-to measurement--some-- then did my own grinding.
With everything in my bowl, I took up what happens to be pretty much the only tool that I ever use when hand mixing things: a fork. I'm weird about other utensils. I hate the stickiness of wooden spoons, and I like how easy it is to hold and manipulate.
With that all combined, I ran into my next bump in the road. My parents have recently rejected the idea of canola or vegetable oil and have taken to using extra light tasting olive oil for baking, we but I couldn't find any even of that. Desperately, I googled vegetable oil substitutes and was pleasantly surprised. Turns out you can use the same amount of a fruit purée as you would oil in a recipe, and your will turn it into a low fat version. Great, now I have non-fat pumpkin muffins, right? No butter, no oil. Guess I should change the title of the post. This seemed to be the perfect way to use the last remains of my homemade apple sauce, especially as I didn't have any apples to chop up and add to the batter-- one of my favorite things to do, especially because you get a little variation of texture along with the nice apple-y taste.
Here's another thing that I'm weird about. I have couple Pyrex cups with measurements on the side. You know-- the things that normal people use for liquid measurements? I don't use them. I out everything in cups for dry measuring and go with it. I measured out all my wets, cracked my eggs, and once again grabbed my fork and stirred and whisked. All mixed together, it looked pretty gross, and I can't say I'm a fan of the smell of pumpkin, so I moved quickly to get everything combined, once again, with the fork.
All of that took a little less than ten minutes, and I was ready to scoop into my tins. I don't always use liners, but I figured this was a special occasion and popped some that I found in the back of a cabinet into their neat little spaces. Then, I picked up the entire bowl of barre,r which was surprisingly heavy, and scooped it into the spaces, definitely overfilling them, but I personally hate the look of a perfect muffin. I much prefer them to be spilling around a bit.
I popped one tin in when it was full, then the next a few minutes later.
After a quick clean up, I eagerly checked them. Here is where I admit that I have no idea how long it takes for muffins to bake, so as I downloaded the blogger app I checked them about every five minutes.
Precisely 23 minutes after I put in the first tin, I poked a muffin with a toothpick and had that "aha, hooray!" moment when the toothpick came out clean, and I took both of the tins out. The second I had placed on a higher rack and they were already looking a little toasty.
I never leave things on the tray or in the tin. I terrified of things sitting there with their bases burning, so I immediately began scooping the muffins out of their places with my bare hands, burning a few finger tips. I put each of them on a rack to cool.
I took the littlest one and peeled back the wrapper. I was a a little upset with how much of the muffin stick to its shell, but having lot let it cool, that was to be expected. If I'm being honest with myself, it was ok. There was a bit more clove than I would have liked and I think it really needed some sort of fat to make it taste really good, but I was happy with the texture and the overall flavor.
