Never Too Early for Pumpkin Muffins

It's only seventy-four days until Halloween/my birthday, and it's not too early for pumpkin muffins.  Snow is appearing on the mountains and it snowed (briefly, no accumulation) at 11,500 feet last weekend.

 

The real impetus to making these muffins was having a jar of pumpkin butter purchased in Palisade, CO, taken on a side trip to Moab, Utah, then brought back to Colorado and home to Wrongmont, moved to Krieg (Craig), and finally came to rest in Winter Park...that's a well-traveled jar of pumpkin butter.

Even at high altitude, these muffins were dry--SHOCKER.  Do you have to use pumpkin butter?  Will regular ol' canned pumpkin do? Absolutely.  As with the "Sell Your Soul Pumpkin Cookies" from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, using reduced, concentrated pumpkin makes everything better.  Plus, I didn't have to add sweetener as the pumpkin butter was sweet enough.

 

 Pumpkin Butter Muffins

Modified from Gluten-Free Goddess

• 3/4 cup nondairy milk


• 1/2 teaspoon apple cider vinegar


• 1/4 cup warm water


• 1/4 cup ground flaxseed


• 1 cup sorghum flour


• 1 cup GF oat flour


• 1/4 cup coconut flour


• 1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum


• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder


• 1 teaspoon baking soda


• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt


• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon


• 1 teaspoon ground ginger (or fresh grated ginger)


• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg


• 10.5 ounces pumpkin butter OR 8 ounces pumpkin puree


• 1/2 cup coconut sugar, blitzed (optional if you are using sweetened pumpkin butter)


• 1/3 cup coconut oil, melted (or canola oil)


• 1/2 cup slivered almonds

 

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.


2. Grease or line with papers a 12-well muffin tin.


3. In a small measuring cup, combine nondairy milk and vinegar and set aside.


4. In a small bowl, combine water and ground flaxseed and set aside.


5. In yet another medium bowl, sift then whisk together flours, xanthan gum, leavening, and spices.


6. With a stand mixer or hand mixer, beat together the pumpkin (butter), sugar, oil, nondairy milk, and flaxseed mixtures until combined.


7. Add in the dry mix in three additions, stirring well between each addition.


8. Stir in the almonds.


9. Transfer batter to pan.


10. Bake for 27-30 minutes or until muffins pass the toothpick test and spring back in the centre.


11. Cool in the pan for five minutes before removing to a rack to cool completely.

 I know, I know, you're probably sick of muffins (I am, too. Can you believe I type these recipes out for each muffin recipe, even though they're about the same in procedure?).  The next recipe will be soup and savoury, how's that?

I used a different pumpkin butter, but Trader Joe's has one, which I used in my birthday cake in 2013. Too much sugar for the overloaded Q then.  Read that post with a grain of salt...actually, with a whole shaker of salt since I become salty when it comes to discussing my time in DC now.  I'm in the phase of "processing" or whatever where I don't spend time thinking about it, but when a memory comes up, I get pretty angry...but then I remember that I have novel ideas to hash out and I can let it go.  Chalk it all up to experience, getting singed but not truly burned, and learning from it.

Besides, the opposite of love isn't hate--it's indifference, to paraphrase Elie Wiesel.  And indifference takes much less energy than hate.  Could indifference, seen in a certain light, be a stepping stone to equanimity?

I had to repost a lot of October 2013 posts in order to link to the one post about my 23rd birthday cake...oy vey.  Anything else I have to say is best summed up in song, Motionless In White's "If It's Dead, We'll Kill It" (feat. Brandan Schiepatti): 

Fuck you, fuck this, everything is distress

and also,

And when yourself is all you have left
With what will you fill your emptiness?

I know I fill my emptiness with writing and it's not a bad thing at all.