porky dickens: easy as (punkin') pie (spice)

So the crusade of Fall cuisine continues here on Porky Dickens. How can we deny it? Fall is super sweet. Plus cooler weather makes you want to eat, right? Even if you prefer Summer, you can still at least appreciate Fall in all its glory, right? For one, it’s the season of harvest, it’s the start of the school year, it’s a good time to reincorporate scarves back into ye olde wardrobe, it can be brilliantly beautiful, you get to make Halloween costumes and also, everything and anything that isn’t nailed down gets the pumpkin spice treatment. Between pumpkin donuts, lattes, muffins and candles, Fall is the time when we are stretched to our collective pumpkin tolerance limits. It’s almost a bit much for me, because I live with a certified Fallcoholic. If there is something on your menu that involves pumpkin, is made with pumpkin or has spent any amount of time in, at or around a pumpkin patch, this woman is going to order it. She’s nuts for all things punkin’ (and you have to say it like that, too ‘punkin’).

Sometimes I roll my eyes, but I must admit that for some reason this year, I’m heavy into punkin’ myself. I’m ready to sprinkle pumpkin pie spice on everything that passes across my kitchen counter until at LEAST the day after Thanksgiving. When you’re baking with punkin’ and the related spices that hang with same, it smells like absolute heaven in your house. Last Friday I came home after work and set to work making these pumpkin muffins and a batch of homemade granola. On a whim, I decided to mix up my spices in the granola and add some pumpkin pie spice, as well as a little molasses, since I had to replace the brown sugar with regular sugar. Can I just tell you? Best. Granola. Eva. And the punkin’ muffins you ask? Easiest thing you ever saw and this is coming from an admitted total spaz when it comes to baking. About half way through any involved baking recipe, my kitchen looks like a tsunami of King Arthur Flour just rolled through and I’m at the point where I don’t care if it’s mixed right, I just want the dadgum thing in the oven already.

But these muffins are a dream. Make them. Your roommate will thank you. When I told Erica I had whipped up a batch she declared it the best Friday night of her whole life. If that makes us seem like pathetic old ladies, then I thank you to keep your judgment to yourself. These muffins have stayed moist and delicious all week long. Do yourself a favor and add a little punkin spice to your life. Also, while you’re at it, make my homemade granoler, and add punkin pie spice. You won’t regret it.

EASY PUNKIN’ MUFFINS

(slightly tweaked from a few different recipes found on Gourmet, smitten kitchen, and serious eats)

1 ½ cups all purpose flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1 can solid packed punkin’

1/3 cup olive oil

2 eggs

1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice

1 cup sugar

½ tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. salt

Preheat oven to 350. Line muffin cups. Whisk pumpkin, oil, eggs, sugar, pumpkin pie spice, baking soda and salt until smooth. Add in flour and baking powder and stir together until just combined.

Divide batter evenly among muffin cups. A little scoop with a scraper if perfect for this and measures it just right. Batter should be about ¾ of the way up the cup. Top with a sprinkle of cinnamon and sugar. Side note: I also think you could put together a nice streusel topping for this and they would be even more amazing, but I didn’t think of this until after mine were done.