Cheers to Fall!

If there is one thing you need to know about me, it’s that I like to eat… A lot.

I grew up in two households that revolved around food. One being with my mom who loves baking, and one with my dad who loves cooking.

Both of my parents had stay-at-home moms who spent most of their time in the kitchen cooking and baking for their big families. With my dad having eight brothers and sisters and my mom having four sisters, you can imagine the great amount of food that was prepared throughout a week in their households.

Luckily for me, I have the opportunity to learn recipes from both of my parents and carry on their parents’ traditions of making home cooked meals and sweets each day and night.

Because I am at school every day around 7-8 hours I get very hungry toward the middle of the day therefore I thought it was fitting to share a healthier, yet tasty snack for all the hungry students out there.

In celebration of the first day of fall (my favourite season), I felt like making something with pumpkin. And since pumpkin spice everything is on its way, I thought I might as well get started with Blueberry Pumpkin Muffins from Allrecipes Canada.

When I’m not using family recipes, I like to go to allrecipes.com. This website has so many great recipes that you’re bound to find something that you will enjoy. The best thing about the recipes on their site is that people from all over Canada comment and rate the recipes after they make them. This then gives you an idea how good the recipe will be and what to expect before cooking.

I read some comments before making these muffins, and the one suggestion I went along with was adding more blueberries (to equal a cup).

This recipe took me about 15 minutes to make and I ended up baking the muffins for less time then supposed to.

Recipe: Blueberry Pumpkin Muffins

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 cup quick cooking oats

2/3 cup white sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt 

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 cup canned pumpkin

1/2 cup milk

1 egg

1/4 cup butter, melted

3/4 cup fresh blueberries or frozen blueberries, thawed

To begin, preheat your oven to 400 degrees F and grease your muffin pan. Since my family bakes so often, we keep the wrappers from the butter once finished to grease our pans. You can use whatever you have in your kitchen, but butter gives more flavour to the finished product.

Wrapping from a finished butter to grease muffin pan

Next, mix all of your dry ingredients together in a bowl. This includes the flour, oats, sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Mix until blended evenly.

Measured ingredients. I find it really helps to have all of your ingredients measured before you start baking.

My dog Molly being a big help in the kitchen while my mom mixes together the dry ingredients.

Follow by getting another bowl to stir all of your wet ingredients in, such as the pumpkin, milk, egg, and butter.

Wet ingredients including canned pumpkin, milk, butter and an egg. I also have my blueberries thawing for the next step.

Next you have to take both bowls (the dry ingredients bowl and the wet ingredients bowl) and combine them. Continue by carefully folding in the blueberries. It helps if you use a spatula for this step so the blueberries don’t burst.

Important to mix all dry ingredients together and then mix all wet ingredients together. By separating the ingredients by textures, they will mix properly giving you the best possible product.

Combining of mixed wet ingredients to mixed dry ingredients.

Addition of blueberries to combined batter.

Lastly, spoon your mixed blueberry pumpkin batter into the greased muffin cups. The batter should fill the cup all the way to the top.

I started by placing one generous tablespoon of batter in each cup, then I went back and added using the remaining.

Place raw muffins in the preheated oven. On the website it said to bake for 20 minutes, but I checked them at 15 minutes and they were done. The trick to successful baking is to not over bake.

Placing uncooked muffins in oven for about 15 minutes. Use the middle rack for best results.

Once you take your pan out of the oven to cool, your baking still remains to cook. This is why I tend to take my baked goods out of the oven a little undercooked so they can sit in the pan for a few minutes and still be cooked enough while remaining moist. Over cooking will really dry out your baking and will result in your recipe not tasting as good, especially toward the end of the week.

Voilà! The baked blueberry pumpkin muffins.

This recipe made 12 large muffins and I was very happy with how they turned out! At first I thought the combination of pumpkin with blueberry might be strange, but they actually taste really good. Because of the ingredients, these muffins would be ideal to eat for breakfast when you just don’t have the time to make anything.

These muffins are perfect to make earlier on in the week so you have something homemade and fresh to take as a snack throughout the school/work week. Also by having oats inside them, one muffin will fill you up.

Thanks for reading and don’t hesitate to comment or email me at mjlapointe@mts.net with recipe requests!