I have struggled and struggled with this recipe, as the muffins tasted really good but didn’t rise very well. It seemed to me as if the issue must be with the leavening. If you have acidic ingredients such as buttermilk, as my original recipe did, then you’re supposed to use baking soda instead of baking powder, but the recipe called for baking powder. So I’ve tried a number of different leavening amounts and combinations, but I never was quite satisfied with the results. After one especially disastrous experiment I got a Sally’s Baking Addiction post in my inbox (she’s one of only three cooking websites to which I subscribe) that was basically her version of this recipe, although with different spices. Boy, would it have been helpful if she’d made those muffins a week earlier! The version I had just produced
muffins
Labor-Intensive but Worthwhile Muffins
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!)