Another one of my badly-composed photographs. I always end up frantically taking a few shots at the very last minute before the hordes pour in the door. We had a very nice retreat breakfast, and the pictured pumpkin muffins were eaten down to the last crumb. I’ve made the recipe a little less complicated. As I’ve mentioned before, the principle for recipes is that you must make three changes in it in order to claim it as your own. I’m giving full credit to America’s Test Kitchen for the original recipe, but I have made three changes: I made muffins instead of bread, I’ve changed the technique for getting water out of the pumpkin, and I’ve taken the butter out of the streusel topping, as the use of butter makes the topping very clumpy. (Also, as you’ll see, there’s another small change I made as I was typing the recipe, so you can note yet another unnecessary step they were making you do!)
PUMPKIN STREUSEL MUFFINS
There are lots of ingredients and lots of steps here, but these are great for a special occasion such as a company breakfast. The sugar content is pretty high for a muffin, clocking i at 18.5 grams with the topping, so you wouldn't want to eat more than one on the 25-gram-limit program, but one is pretty satisfying.
Ingredients
Topping:
- 5 tablespoons or 2 1/2 oz. packed light brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon flour
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
Muffin batter:
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 15-oz. can pumpkin puree Not pumpkin pie filling.
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup oacked light brown sugar Yes, this is a lot of sugar. These are definitely special-occasion muffins.
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 4 ounces cream cheese Cut into pieces, room temperature
- 4 large eggs
- 1/4 cup buttermilk Or 1/4 cup water and 1 tablespoon buttermilk powder. If you use the buttermilk powder, add that in with the dry ingredients and put the water in here.
- 1 cup walnuts toasted and chopped fine (optional)
Instructions
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Mis topping ingredients together with your fingers.
Here is a new technique for removing water from the pumpkin: rather than cooking down the puree as the original recipe said to do:
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Line a baking sheet with a triple layer of paper towels, spread the pumpkin puree on them, then put another two layers of paper towels on top, and press firmly on those top towels. They will quickly become saturated with moisture. You'd think that you'd end up with a total mess and have to scrape the pumpkin off the towels, but it just peels right off. You'll then need to measure the drained pumpkin to make sure you haven't removed too much moisture; you want it to measure 1 1/2 cups.
Make batter:
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Plop the pumpkin into a bowl and mix in the granulated sugar, brown sugar, oil, and cream cheese until combined and there are no traces of cream cheese. Whisk together eggs and buttermilk (or water, if you're using the powder). Add egg mixture to pumpkin mixture and whisk to combine. (But--I'm not sure this whole extra whisking step is necessary, and now you have yet another dirty bowl. Just put the eggs and buttermilk or water in the bowl with the pumpkin and mix it, for heaven's sake!) Fold flour mixture into pumpkin mixture until combined (some small lumps of flour are OK). Fold walnuts into batter, if using.
Baking insructions:
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Scoop batter into prepared pans. Sprinkle topping evenly over top of each muffin. Bake until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 15-20 minutes. Rotate those pans, even if you have a convection oven. I was able to bake four pans at once (so a double recipe) even though my oven door didn't quite close. Let muffins cool in pans on wire rack for 5-10 minutes before removing from pans. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Recipe Notes
Good with cream cheese.
