Pumpkin Raisin Muffins

It's never too warm for pumpkin!

You can imagine the sort of things that are most commonly donated to our food pantry - canned green beans, corn, and peas as well as mac 'n cheese and ramen noodles. The single most common item donated however, is canned cranberry sauce. My only guess is that people buy more than one can around Thanksgiving/Christmas and then remember that no one in their family enjoys it but them and they can't eat more than one can. I have yet to work up the bravery to try to make anything out of congealed cranberries, but this week I cracked open the other Thanksgiving/Christmas season donations and showed our residents how to use them.

We ended up this year with a whole shelf full of pureed pumpkin. Pumpkin is fantastic! It can be sweet or not. It can be used in baked goods or soups or stews or as a spread. I love pumpkin. So, even though it is June, we've been revelling in the Fall fruits this week.

The recipe came from this site and was delicious:

Pumpkin Raisin Muffins

Number of Servings: Two dozen

Ingredients:
1 cup Fresh or Canned Pumpkin
3 1/2 cups Flour
1 cup Sugar
2 Eggs
1 1/4 cup 2% Milk
1/4 cup Soft Butter or margarine
1 cup Raisins
4 teaspoons Baking Powder
1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon Nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon Salt

Directions: Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Put muffin cups into muffin tins or grease the tins. Cream butter(or margarine) and sugar until fluffy. Beat in pumpkin and eggs. Dredge raisins in 1/2 cup of flour. Sift remaining flour and spices together. Pour milk into a mixing bowl. Mix in dry ingredients by hand until just mixed. Stir in raisins. Spoon mix into paper cups in muffin tin. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 - 25 minutes. Serve pumpkin raisin muffins warm or cool. Spread on butter or margarine, if desired.

Notes: I mentioned in the last post that I am terrible at baking. This is what happens when you forget the baking powder:

They don't rise! Who knew! I salvaged the second half of the batch, but I guaruntee they would have been yummier if I would have followed the directions from the start.

I used canned evaporated milk instead of fresh milk and then used the leftover milk and pumpkin to make a Pumpkin Latte. Delicious!