These Cranberry Pumpkin muffins are moist and delicious. There's no worries or guilt here, because I converted this recipe to be HEALTHY enough to eat for Breakfast!
And they still turned out yummy & addictive. YEAH!!!
HERE'S WHAT YOU'LL NEED
dry ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
- 3/4 cups dark brown sugar
- 1/2 cup old fashion oats
- 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup chopped pecans
- 1/4 cup sweetened dried, cranberries
- 1/4 cup golden raisins
wet ingredients
- 1 1/4 cup pure pumpkin puree
- 1/2 cup healthy egg substitute or 2 eggs
- 1/2 cup all natural applesauce or canola oil
- 1/4 cup orange juice or water
Preheat oven to 350F degrees. Grease and flour 12 count muffin pan.
FIRST! Baking tip for the dried cranberries & raisins.
Place the cranberries and raisins in a microwave safe bowl and cover with warm water. Microwave on HIGH for 1 minute. This is a speedy way to rehydrate the dried fruit. Drain off the water from the dried fruit. The rehydrated fruit won't burn when it's exposed at the top of the baked item.
Now back to mixing it up. In a large mixing bowl, combine all the dry ingredients, including the pecans, rehydated cranberries and raisins. Mix well.
In a small bowl, stir together all the wet ingredients.
Always adding the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, use a rubber spatula and fold the wet into the dry ingredients. Do not over mix here. Go slowly allowing the flour a chance to absorb the moisture. Make sure all the flour is moisten.
Use either a 2 inch scooper or a large spoon to fill the muffin pan. I filled each muffin cup to the top. These are dense muffins so you can sorta heap the batter.
BAKE for 18-20 minutes.
Store the muffins just like you would Banana Bread, on a plate wrapped with cellophane, or in a resealable storage bag. They will keep well out on the counter in cool temperatures for at least three days. That's how long they lasted at my house. I had the last one for breakfast this morning and it was better than the first day.
These are going on my list of what to make with all of the pumpkin puree!!!
I’m making these again!
This time, I’m running more oatmeal thru a food processor to get a finer texture first. Then try cutting back the flour by 1/2 cup.
I’m going for a heart healthy breakfast item here.
These sound wonderful! I can’t wait to try this recipe.
I am going to try these and substitute mashed sweet potato for the pumpkin. I always seem to end up with leftover sweet potatoes when I bake them. My granddaughter has severe food allergies, and this looks like a recipe that I can easily make fit in her food program.
Karen, substituting with sweet potato sounds like a great idea! I lurv sweet tators and always end up with leftovers, too.
What pretty pumpkin! I just made a quickbread so this looks like a good one to try next.
Yum…I’m gonna try as Jill says then try them like Karen M….what a good idea!
Hi Tammy!
Good morning! I used your idea to use the spinach/salad container as a bread box. I love it because now I can see how much bread is left to start another batch of bread!
COOL! Tammy, I am so glad to hear the container works well for you, too.
I purchased another large container of spinach and I’m just as excited to recycle the container as I am to eat the spinach.
Isn’t that silly?
I added chopped dates to the mix and since I didn’t have the old fashioned oats, I substituted a package of Kashi GoLean honey and cinnamon to the mix. I also sprinkled Wilton’s white sparkling sugar on the top before baking in mini muffin tins. They came out moist and delicious! I will definitely make this recipe again. I think you could easily add anything you wanted to it and it would still be great!
so inviting. It’s making me hungry:)
What a great recipe, thank you! I made it with fresh (frozen) cranberries instead of dried and used twice as many as you suggested for the dried. I also did a conversion to substitute honey for brown sugar (then another liquid in the recipe needs to be reduced). They came out so yummy! The next time I made it, I put it all together in one cake pan and served it as dessert. People loved it! Thank you for the great ideas.
You’re welcome, Jill, and thank you for sharing how you made it yours. Answer me this, what do you mean to reduce another liquid in the recipe? By how much? and which one?
I have a recipe book that includes a small conversion chart, which is great because it gives almost every thinkable alternative to sugar and the instructions on how to substitute each alternative sweetener in a recipe that calls for sugar. For using honey instead of sugar it says the following:
1 cup sugar = 3/4 cup honey (minus 1/4 cup liquid, plus 1/4 tsp. baking soda to neutralize the acid. Reduce oven temperature by 25 degrees.)
So, for this recipe, if I remember correctly, it was easier to do the math for this substitution if I doubled the recipe. Luckily, my husband loves these muffins so doubling was no problem.
So, in the doubled recipe, instead of 1 1/2 cups of brown sugar, I used 1 cup of honey. (The math comes out to 1.125 cups of honey, but honey is so sweet that 1 cup was plenty.)
Then, to reduce the liquid, instead of the 1/2 cup orange juice or water (1/4 cup if not doubled), I just left that out. I think I may have added a little extra baking soda, but that may not be necessary since there’s already a fair amount called for in this recipe.
Then I baked at 325 instead of 350, so it took a little longer to bake this way. But every oven is different so I can’t give an exact amount of time.
I hope that helps. Happy baking!