By Erin Walgamuth

It’s here; it finally feels like fall, yippee!! To honor the occasion and the weather I thought I would share another recipe that I have made as a wholesome after school snack for my children. These easy to make muffins will fill your house with the lovely aroma of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves and bring a smile to the face of your hungry children, maybe yours too!

I usually keep it simple and sprinkle raw sugar over the top of the muffin batter before putting them in the oven, but they are delicious topped with cream cheese frosting as well.

Makes 12 muffins

Prep time is about 15 minutes

Cook time is about 18 minutes

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

Note: I will sometimes mix all the dry ingredients together in the medium size bowl, then cover tightly with plastic wrap and store on the kitchen counter until I am ready to bake. This makes it much faster to get these little gems in the oven.

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You will need-

Medium mixing bowl

Large mixing bowl

12 capacity muffin tin

12 paper muffin cups. I bought some really cute Halloween muffin cups from the Michaels craft store.

Rubber or plastic spatula

Small off-set spatula or fork for removing hot muffins from the tin

Cooling rack

1 ½ cups of all-purpose flour

¼ cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

½ cup of granulated sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon sea salt or table salt

1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

½ cup of pureed pumpkin such as Libbys

¼ cup of melted butter

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

½ cup of whole milk

Raw sugar for sprinkling

Put all of the dry ingredients in the medium mixing bowl. Use the whisk to thoroughly mix all of the ingredients together and set aside.

Put the pumpkin puree in the large mixing bowl and whisk in the melted butter until thoroughly combined. Whisk in eggs one at a time until thoroughly combined. Whisk in vanilla and milk until thoroughly combined.

Use the rubber or plastic spatula to fold (not beat) half of the dry ingredients followed by half of the milk into the pumpkin mixture, than repeat this process until all of the ingredients are well combined. The batter will be slightly lumpy.

Put approximately ¼ cup of batter into each muffin cup. If you like, you can sprinkle about ¼ teaspoon of raw sugar over the top of each muffin-to-be.

Bake muffins in preheated oven for approximately 18 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean when inserted into the middle of a muffin.

Take the muffins from the oven and use the off-set spatula or the fork to carefully remove the muffins from the pan. Put hot muffins on a cooling rack to cool.

Store any completely cooled muffins in a large zip-lock bag or in a food container with an air tight lid.

Enjoy!

Erin Walgamuth has been an assistant Food Stylist for television and print for the past 26 years and writes this column using her own recipes. Check out her other creations in our Hometown Recipe section.