Wholesome and moist muffins made with pureed pumpkin and cottage cheese.
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
3 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tbsp flax
1 cup unsweetened pumpkin puree
1 cup pureed light cottage cheese
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 eggs
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1/3 cup chocolate chips, or dried cranberries, or raisins (optional)
Preheat oven to 400F. In a medium bowl, combine flour, oats, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, sugar, baking powder and flax. In another bowl mix together pumpkin, cheese, maple syrup, egg and oil. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Fold in chocolate chips if using. Scoop batter into greased mini-muffin cups and bake for 12-15 minutes.
I was originally going to make Marla’s Cranberry Pumpkin Ricotta Cookies from Family Fresh Cooking, but I made a little tweak here and a little substitution there and somehow they ended up as these muffins. Luckily they turned out to be a delicious creation. Tony took a bite and said ‘wow, these muffins are really good!’ and then grabbed a bunch of them to take to work. The boys didn’t love them quite as much, but they don’t seem to like muffins of any kind. I don’t really understand it; I mean, who doesn’t like muffins? Well apparently my boys don’t. That’s fine though because Tony and I didn’t really want to share anyway. I really love the combination of cheese and pumpkin in these muffins. I didn’t have ricotta cheese so I pureed cottage cheese with an immersion blender and it worked great. You could also use a regular blender if you don’t happen to have an immersion blender handy.
Update: A friend has tried these muffins using applesauce instead of pumpkin, and ricotta instead of pureed cottage cheese. They were apparently a big hit with the kids!