Pumpkin Breakfast (or anytime) Muffins

I recently hosted a baby shower for a dear friend of mine. I wanted to make a gluten free option for some of the guests so I made my all time favorite pumpkin bread into muffin form! I added an extra date to this recipe since I was baking for others and most people like a little sweeter muffin.

Here is the recipe! I hope you love these little breakfast muffins (or anytime muffins) as much as I do. I also included a higher protein option in the recipe. Oooh, and they are amazing topped with homemade almond butter.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups oat flour (I use my blender to blend up some oats)
• Higher protein option: replace 1/2 cup of oat flour with 1/2 cup collagen. I buy mine at Thrive Market.
• 1 tsp baking powder (aluminum free… it’s easy to make your own: see notes below**)
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp Sea Salt: I buy my Redmonds Real Sea Salt at Thrive Market.
• 1 TBS ceylon cinnamon
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• a dash ground cloves
• a dash of ginger
• 1 tsp vanilla extract (no high fructose corn syrup added)
• 1 cup pumpkin puree (you can use a 1/2 can of canned pumpkin puree or fresh baked pumpkin puree.) Do NOT use pumpkin pie filling, just plain pumpkin) I like to use the canned organic pumpkin Target sells in the BPA free cans.
• 1 cup over ripe mashed bananas (about 2 bananas)
• 2  farm fresh eggs
• about 7 dates for blending
• walnuts for topping (optional)
• 1 TBS coconut oil plus extra coconut oil for greasing pan

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Make your oat flour in the blender or food processor (by blending some old fashioned or quick oats) if you haven’t already.

3. Place 7 pitted dates into the food processor (<—this is the one I have) and process until it becomes a thick paste.

4. Add bananas, eggs, pumpkin puree, coconut oil, vanilla extract, and bananas and blend thoroughly.

5. Add all your dry ingredients into the food processor (oat flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves, and ginger) and blend thoroughly. You may have to scrape the dry ingredients off the side a few times between blending to make sure you get all the ingredients blended completely.

6. Use an ice cream scooper to scoop out your mixture into cupcake lined cupcake pans and top with walnut pieces (if you want walnuts).

7. Bake for about 15 minutes (or until a toothpick comes out clean when you poke the middle of the largest cupcake). Be sure not to over bake.

8. Allow cupcakes to rest for 10 minutes then place them on a cupcake rack to cool completely.

9. Enjoy!

Store these in the fridge and either eat them in the next 3 days or freeze them for later.

I love that they are in cupcake form because you could make a double batch with a whole can of pumpkin and freeze them. Then just take out cupcakes as you need/want them.

Here are the muffins (far left) at the baby shower. They were a hit. I also brought along some of my homemade almond butter to top them with. Yumtastic!!

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