Pumpkin Gingerbread Blueberry Muffins!

My blogger friend Tina from Mom's Crazy Cooking started a new recipe exchange called Crazy Cooking Challenge where a featured food item is selected each month and bloggers are free to use any (non-professional) blog recipe that looks tasty, prepare and blog about it, and we all post about it on the same day. It’s a low stress exchange that’s a great way to meet new food bloggers, and if you’d like to join us, the details are here.

April was blueberry muffin month, and I started out by simply Googling “blueberry muffin recipe blog.” I knew I’d get a lot of hits, but no idea how many – 2,520,000 results as a matter of fact. Have you ever noticed the amount of BUTTER in many blueberry muffin recipes? Like whole sticks. I decided to revise my criteria to find healthier recipes and added “oatmeal” to my search criteria. Still nothing was jumping out saying you-gotta-make-me. I then remembered the conversation we recently had about using the pumpkin I roasted and froze in the fall and added “pumpkin” to my search.

Voila, and I found Em Loves. Emily’s a prolific baker but healthy is important to her being a big-time runner. Her Pumpkin Gingerbread Blueberry Muffins were amazing and with no butter or oil!! Still super moist thanks to the pumpkin, without being overly sweet (I did cut back the sugar called for in her recipe), and full of great blueberry flavor. These turned out to be local Missouri muffins, too. Besides using local pumpkin and blueberries we picked last summer and froze, I substituted local sorghum for the molasses and threw in some local pecans, which added crunchy texture that paired nicely with the softness of the berries. The recipe below reflects the changes I made.

Pumpkin Gingerbread Blueberry Muffins

Makes 14 muffins

1 C canned pumpkin

Between 1/2 and 3/4 C white sugar

3 T sorghum

1 egg

1 t vanilla extract

1 C all-purpose flour

1 C whole wheat pastry flour

1 t ground cinnamon

1/2 t ground nutmeg

1/2 t ground ginger

1 t baking soda

1/2 t salt

1 C buttermilk

2 HEAPING cups fresh or frozen blueberries (if using frozen, mix with enough flour to lightly coat the berries. This prevents the batter from turning blue)

1/3 C chopped pecans

2 T sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Line a muffin tin with muffin liners (I ended up making 14 muffins).

In a large bowl, mix pumpkin, sugar, and sorghum together until creamy. Mix in egg and vanilla extract.

In a small bowl, sift together flours, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, baking soda, and salt.

Gradually add flour mixture into pumpkin mixture, alternating with the buttermilk, until both the flour mixture and buttermilk are incorporated into the batter. Fold in the blueberries. Add the pecans. 

Batter will be thin.

Pour batter into 12 muffin cups (cups will be VERY full!). Sprinkle remaining 2 Tbsp sugar over the top of the batter.

Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out fairly clean.

Let muffins cool in baking pan for 5 minutes before placing on a cooling rack.

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