Pumpkin (or sweet potato) Muffin Recipe

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 cup white sugar (I used organic)
  
• 1 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoons nutmeg
• 1 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 teaspoons ground cloves
• NOTE - In place of the 3 above spices you can use 2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
  
• 3 eggs (If you wanted to veganize I recommend using a combination of vegan replacers like flax seed, bananas or Ener-G)
  
• 1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin OR 2-3 baked sweet potatoes, mashed to get approx. 2 cups
  
• 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1/2 cup raisins or dried cranberries
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts or almonds
  

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 C). Grease two 12 cup muffin pans, or line with paper muffin liners. Soak cranberries in hot water for ten minutes to plump, then drain.
2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, and ground cloves. In a separate bowl, mix the eggs, pumpkin, and applesauce, until smooth. Add this mixture to the dry ingredients and stir thoroughly to make a smooth batter. Stir the cranberries and almonds into the batter. Spoon batter into the prepared muffin cups to 3/4 full.
3. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
4. Makes 16 muffins

These muffins are DELICIOUS! Sweet, but not overly so, dense but not heavy, not oily or greasy at all because there is no added fat, yummy burst of cranberry goodness throughout...the perfect thing to grab for breakfast with my smoothie in the morning instead of toast. I made 16 and I am refrigerating half and freezing the other half. And of course, because I am always thinking of ways to make additions, I may add some orange zest in with this next time...I bet the flavor would really add a lot!

Now I normally am not too fussy about the nutrition info or tracking calories religiously, but I was curious to see what the nutrition info was on this recipe because I did alter it from another recipe using different measurements of nuts and fruit, switching whole wheat flour for all purpose and cutting the sugar in half (because I don't want my breakfast muffins to taste like cupcakes!) and I was pleasantly surprised. If you make 16 muffins from this recipe each muffin comes out to about 175 calories, 3 g of fat, 3.5 grams of fiber and almost 5 grams of protein. Not to bad if you ask me! I included the full breakdown below if you are interested. I got this from entering the recipe into Spark People's recipe calculator which is a very handy tool.

So please make a batch of these and let me know how you like them!

Amount Per Serving
Calories		177.1
Total Fat		3.1 g
	Saturated Fat	0.5 g
	Polyunsaturated Fat	0.6 g
	Monounsaturated Fat	1.5 g
Cholesterol		39.8 mg
Sodium		18.9 mg
Potassium		132.5 mg
Total Carbohydrate		34.9 g
	Dietary Fiber	3.6 g
	Sugars	17.5 g
Protein		4.8 g