The warm spices and chocolatey goodness makes pumpkin brownie muffins the perfect fall treat. These muffins will impress all your friends with little effort on your part. The muffins take about thirty minutes to make and fifty minutes to bake.
First, combine the dry ingredients including: flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, cayenne, and nutmeg. Then heat the chocolate and butter on the stove at medium heat by putting them in a bowl over a boiling pot of water. Keep stirring the chocolate and butter to keep from burning and make sure they do not get too hot. Next comes the sugar and oil. Mix these with a blender for approximately five minutes until fluffy, if you do not have a blender some good ol’ elbow grease and a whisk will do the trick too, though it may take a little longer. After the eggs and oil are a light yellow, slowly add the dry ingredients. After their thoroughly combined split the batter into two bowls and add the stars of the show to each. In one bowl add the warm chocolate and butter concoction and to the other bowl of batter add the pumpkin.
Now the fun part, assembling. The batter can be made into muffins or brownies, but everyone knows muffins are much cuter and delicious than a brownie. Use a nonstick pan or butter a tray to keep them from sticking. To get the oh so impressive marble appearance add a little of the pumpkin batter and then a little of the chocolate batter alternating till desired muffin size is reached (the muffins rise quite a bit so it is recommended that one fills the muffin tin halfway with batter.) For the final touch sprinkle chopped hazelnuts (or almonds) and white chocolate chips if you are really feeling spiffy. Finally comes the hardest part, baking the muffins for an entire fifty minutes. This time seems like forever with the warm aroma of the muffins filling your home, but it must be done.
These muffins are tasty and their smell is so taunting they caused a few of my friends to go against their morals, stealing the muffins from a well covered and labeled platter. One friend, Erica French, said “It was the most delicious muffin I’ve ever had.”
This recipe is simple for something with so much flavor and so delicious. The only area these muffins are not perfect on is the health and nutrition side, where they are a little too much. Try to make the muffins on the smaller side to avoid excessive portions of sugar. The muffins could also be made a little more healthy by substituting applesauce for some of the sugar and whole wheat flour or ground oats instead of the typical all purpose flour. It is fun to experiment with recipes to find a good balance of tasty and nutritious, but this can also lead to some interesting food. Let your right brain have a little fun and see what you can do with these muffins the next time you feel like you need a spice in your life.