I love baking, but I often feel like I don’t have time for it these days.  It’s often time-consuming. Saturdays are usually the best day for me to tackle a baking project because the husband is usually home and can look after Asher while I fiddle in the kitchen.

I love how baking can slow down time. It’s so easy in this day and age to always want the quick fix, the fast food; who has an hour to just do something? But I’m reminded by something profound I read on the topic of time. It went something like this: In our day of modern conveniences we have almost every appliance under the moon to save time, yet we work more than generations past, and have less time than ever…somethings ascue with this picture. That’s why I think it’s good to slow down, and tackle something that takes awhile, even if it seems like overkill, it can help to slow things down (provided you don’t feel rushed or stressed).

I even used a real pumpkin. Not sure if I’d recommend it, it was kind of a pain, but since I bought it I wanted to use it. The U-shape peeler really made it fairly easy to peel (even though it was still much more challenging than squash!).

Anyone who read my fall board post might remember that perfecting pumpkin dunkin muffins was one of the things on my list . So here’s to no more procrastinating (the important, non-urgent things in life): my first attempt at perfecting dunkin donut muffins. Click HERE for the beginning, if this is your first day stopping in.

Let me tell you, I definitely put this one off because of the time it took…even though there was a time I would have laughed at the idea of muffins taking too much time. When you have a little one to care for full-time, time is very precious, and yes, an hour is a lot to find sometimes!

Recipe

Makes 12.

I ended up going with the joy of cooking pumpkin muffin recipe because I had all the ingredients, and I had success with it in the past.

• Preheat oven to 400 F, line or grease a muffin pan. Make sure oven rack is centered.

Whisk together thoroughly in a large bowl:

• 2 cups of flour, 1 tbs baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, and ground nutmeg, 1/3 cup of sugar
• Whisk together in another large bowl:
• 2 large eggs, 1 cup of milk, 2/3 cup of sugar, 1/2 of vegetable oil

Pour the dry ingredients into the wet. Several swift swipes should do the job, but remember to leave it lumpy, and DO NOT over mix or the muffins will not come out nice and peaked.

Streusel: Mix, and add on top of muffins before placed in the oven.

• 3 tbs of brown sugar, 3 tbs of white sugar, 3 tbs of melted buter, 6 tbs of flour

Bake for about 17 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool on cooling rack in pan for 5 minutes, than remove, and place on the cooling rack again. You should allow them to cool for at least 15 minutes before you apply the icing (I cheated and did it after 5 minutes). Drizzel on with a spoon.

Icing:

• 3 tbs of icing sugar, a touch of milk (about 1 tbs).

Tip:

if you can get your hand on one of these cookie scoops, they are awesome for scooping muffin batter into pans, otherwise  1/4 cup measuring devise, or a tablespoon works fine.

The Verdict:

They taste good (both my husband and I taste tested them); but they taste more like muffins than they do like cake, whereas DD’s muffins taste like cake. The color was lighter than DD’s. I used from scratch pumpkins, so I’m sure that affected the color. Also, I have a hunch that DD uses pumpkin pie filler for the batter. I’ve tried a slightly undercooked muffin at DD’s once, and it kind of tasted like that. Of course, I would have to make the icing much thicker (an addition of cream cheese and butter to the icing would have helped).  OH, and the muffin tops came out a little “flatter” than when I went without the streusel, so I’d want to tweak that as well. So it’s not a bang on replica, but a healthier-still-tastes-good version. I don’t think I’ll write this one-off, but I would like to give it another try.

Do you have a killer pumpkin muffin recipe? I would love to try it.

Happy Baking,

Amanda.