Pumpkin Muffins

I need to post this before fall is over so you all can enjoy these very delicious pumpkin muffins!!

First let me say that we are not a pumpkin eating family! Bryan and I have never been crazy about pumpkin anything. So I was a little hesitant to try these but I am so glad I did!! :)

For Halloween I wanted to do a fun fall day with the kids and throw in as much education as I could. One of the things I wanted to do was to get a pumpkin and cut it open for the children to see what one looks like on the inside. We have done this before with Isaac and Sarah but not with the little ones. I called and asked Bryan to pick me up a pumpkin on his way home from work.

He called me from the store and said all they had was these smaller pumpkins and wanted to know if that was ok. "Sure", I was a little disappointed that they were not bigger. The next day the kids and I set to cut the pumpkin open and look at all the "yuck" on the inside. I noticed that these pumpkins were "pie pumpkins" so I thought it would be neat for us to see the "goody" in them too. 

We could make some pumpkin bread with this. But how would we get the "goody" out? So I got on the internet and began to search (I really didn't know). I found a website that gave step by step instructions on how to cook a pumpkin and then be able to scoop out all the "goody".

It was supper easy and the kids and I were learning something together!! We cooked the pumpkins and once we scooped it out we had this bowl looking shell (see top picture). The kids had so much fun taking turns scooping out all the pumpkin goody.

Then I took my Banana Bread/Muffin recipe and added pumpkin instead of banana, I added 1 Tbsp of Pumpkin Pie spice to the dry ingredients, and then I added 1/4 cup of chocolate chips to half the batter. Below are pictures of what the end results looked like.

I hesitantly tried the first bite....oh my these are supper delicious! Everyone loved them and I will make more with some of the pumpkin I had left over. I also went to the store and bought another pie pumpkin so I could freeze some pumpkin and make more muffins/bread later!!

We have muffins on Sunday mornings and so now I can freeze these and we just pop them out on Sunday mornings for a yummy breakfast!!

Pumpkin Muffins

2 cups of flour (I actually did 1/2 whole wheat and 1 1/2 white all purpose)
1 Tbsp. of Pumpkin Pie spice
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 heaping cup of pumpkin (fresh is best :))
2 eggs
1 cup of sugar (I actually used 2/3 cup)
1/2 cup of oil (I used 1/4 cup of applesauce and 1/4 cup of oil)
3 Tbsp of milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup of chocolate chips (or 1/4 cup if you are doing half plain and half with chips)

Preheat oven to 350. Combine all the dry ingredients (first 5) in a bowl and set to side. Then combine all the wet ingredients (except the milk and vanilla) in a bowl. Pour the dry ingredients into the wet and mix well. Add the milk and the vanilla (and chocolate chips) and mix well. Pour into greased muffin tin or greased bread pan and bake. 15-20 minutes for muffins and 45-60 minutes for bread (dpending on size of bread pan). Cool for 5 minutes and then remove from pan and ENJOY!!!