Halloween may have come and gone, but we can still celebrate the amazing flavours of the fall season. After all, we only get to enjoy pumpkin season once a year, so might as well embrace right?
To be honest, I didn’t cook with pumpkin very much growing up (it’s not really a part of Indian/East African cuisine), so this year when Ahmed (who’s a Halloween baby) asked me to bake something with pumpkin, I decided to accept the challenge. His only request was that we add chocolate chips. I figured I could make these muffins healthy enough that a few chocolate chips sprinkled on the top would be just fine ;)
One of the best things about these little babies is that the muffin batter is made entirely in the blender, so Ahmed was basically able to make the whole thing himself … I was more like his sous chef ;) Aside from a couple of overflowing cups of oats and smudges of orange pumpkin puree on my white counters, I’d say he did a pretty damn good job!
These turned out so amazing, soft and chewy on the inside, naturally sweetened with a lovely hint of cinnamon and also a great source of fibre. Most importantly, they got 2 thumbs up from each of my 2 most important critics :)
So grab your aprons, get the family together and get baking!
Healthy Pumpkin Oat Muffins with Chocolate Chips
What you’ll need
1 cup, pumpkin puree
⅓ cup, pure maple syrup
2 eggs
1 tsp, vanilla extract
4 tbsp, almond butter
1-2 medjool dates (pits removed, and dates soaked in water for 10-15 minutes)
¼ cup, unsweetened almond milk
2½ cups, rolled oats
1 tsp, baking powder
½ tsp, baking soda
½ tsp, salt
1 tsp, cinnamon
½ cup, dark chocolate chips
Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 12-muffin tray with coconut oil. Place all ingredients in blender in the order listed (wet ingredients first, then dry). Leave out the chocolate chips until the end (or do what we do, which is eat half of them while we’re making the muffins!). Blend all the ingredients, you may need to stop and push ingredients around to help out the blender. Once the batter is a nice smooth and thick consistency, you can add in the chocolate chips and stir them into the batter. ( Note: sometimes the batter gets a little hot in the blender, so it’s a good idea to let it cool down a bit before adding in the chocolate chips, so they don't melt into the batter).
Pour the batter into the muffin tray and bake for 12-15 minutes (till you can stick a toothpick in and it comes out clean). Let cool for 10 minutes (if you can wait that long) and enjoy.
The kids love these as an after school snack, treat after dinner, or even in the morning. You could swap out the almond butter for a seed butter so they would be “nut free” and school friendly :)
Enjoy!
Zehra