These Healthy Pumpkin Muffins are tender, moist, totally delicious and so easy to make. One bite and you’ll want to make them again and again.
Fall means so many things. It’s finally sweater weather. Cool days and cooler nights. The leaves are putting on their last show of breathtaking beauty and the holidays are coming. That also means fabulous comfort food. Like these Healthy Pumpkin Muffins.
I’ve always loved making pumpkin bread. It helped that a dear friend gave me a gorgeous pumpkin bread pan that she found at Williams-Sonoma. That pan is exceptional and so beautiful with its embossed pumpkins. It just makes you want to bake. So every Fall I get out that bread pan and whip up some pumpkin bread.
This year though I decided to change it up a bit. I opted for pumpkin muffins. And I wanted them to be healthy…of course. So instead of flour I decided to make my own oat flour out of rolled oats. Super easy with a food processor or blender.
The result was a tender muffin that is wonderfully moist from the pumpkin purée. And instead of adding nuts inside, I decided just to make a crumble for the topping.
These were an instant hit.
Ingredients for Healthy Pumpkin Muffins
- Rolled oats: Which will turn into flour in your food processor
- Sugar: True, I substituted honey, but sugar works well in this recipe
- Baking soda: It makes these muffins rise beautifully
- Pumpkin pie spice: For pumpkin muffins…what else?
- Salt: Just a bit
- Pumpkin Purée: The star of the show
- Almond milk: This is my go-to milk
- Butter: For moistness and flavor
- Eggs: Again for rising
- Vanilla: Nothing beats vanilla for flavor
- Pecans: For crunchy caramel flavor
How to Make Healthy Pumpkin Muffins
Add rolled oats to a food processor and blend until the oats become oat flour. This will take 3-4 minutes.
It turns into wonderfully fluffy flour.
Then add the dry ingredients, the oat flour, sugar, baking soda, pumpkin pie spice and salt, to a medium mixing bowl and blend the ingredients together.
In a separate bowl add the wet ingredients, the pumpkin purée, almond milk, butter, eggs and vanilla and mix until combined.
Then gently fold the wet mixture into the dry mixture. This is really important because the muffins won’t rise if you over mix them.
Next add muffin liners to a 12 cup cupcake pan. I found some really cute muffin liners on Amazon, but regular muffin liners work on this recipe as well. Then just divide the pumpkin batter evenly between the muffin liners.
I intentionally didn’t put nuts inside the muffins, because they have a tendency to get too soft when they’re baked inside batter. So instead I decided to make a crunchy topping of oat flour, brown sugar, pumpkin spice, pumpkin purée, salt, melted butter and some candied pumpkin seeds that I found at Trader Joe’s.
After dividing the topping evenly over the muffins, I baked the muffins in a 375 F preheated oven for about 28 minutes.
Really so easy to make. We loved them. Hope you do too.
Happy Fall, Ya’All!
Healthy Pumpkin Muffins
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 Cups Rolled oats Save 1 cup for the the topping
- 1/2 Cup Sugar
- 1 Tsp Baking soda
- 1 Tbsp Pumpkin pie spice
- 1/4 Tsp salt
- 1 Cup Pureed pumkin
- 1/4 Cup Almond milk
- 1/4 Cup Butter (Unsalted) melted
- 2 Eggs
- 1 Tsp Vanilla
- 1/3 Cup Pecans Chopped
- 5 Tbsp Brown sugar
- 2 Tbsp Sugar
- 1 Tsp Pumpkin pie spice
- 1/4 Tsp salt
- 4 Tbsp Butter (Unsalted) melted
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F
- Line a 12 cup muffin pan with 12 liners.
- Add oats to a food processor and blend until it becomes oat flour, about 3 minutes. (Reserve 1 cup for the topping.)
- In a medium bowl add 1 1/2 cups of oat flour, sugar, baking soda, pumpkin pie spice and salt. Stir to combine.
- In a separate bowl add the wet ingredients: Pumpkin puree, milk, butter, eggs and vanilla. Mix with a mixer until combined.
- Then gently fold the flour mixture into the wet mixture. This step is important because over mixing will cause the muffins not to rise.
- Divide the pumpkin batter into the muffin liners.
- For the topping: Combine the reserved 1 cup of oat flour with the pecans, brown sugar, sugar, pumpkin pie spice, pumpkin puree, salt and melted butter. Stir until crumbly.
- Divide the topping over each muffin.
- Bake 25-28 minutes until toothpick inserted comes out clean.
Nutrition
