Tasty Tuesday - Pumpkin Chocolate Muffins

There was a bake sale at Mister Man's school last week. Remember those and how fun they were to pick and choose what you wanted from all the great bakers in the community, ooooing and ahhhing over the delectable delights? Most schools no longer allow this or just have store bought items (boo!), but we're lucky that ours still allows a bake sale from homemade goodies. Of course, I had to bake, too.

I couldn't choose something easy or simple that I knew a lot of people would be making. No brownies or chocolate chip cookies or sugar cookies for me. I had to find something that I thought would be unique for the bake sale but still appealing and somewhat seasonal. I finally decided to make pumpkin chocolate muffins, and they were awesome. Even better, they were dairy and nut free, so some students who normally can't purchase treats were able to enjoy them, too.

Pumpkin Chocolate Muffins

Ingredients:
4 eggs
1 1/2 c granulated sugar
1 15oz can pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
3 c flour
2 t baking soda
1 1/2 t baking powder
2 t cinnamon
1/2 t nutmeg
1/2 t salt
2 c chocolate chunks (mini chips work, I chopped a bar of dark chocolate)

Directions:
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees (I always bake with my convection oven, which means I preheat to 300 for baking - mine has a great feature that recalculates the temp and time for baked goods using a convection). You can make these regular size muffins (about 2 dozen) or mini muffins (up to 8 dozen). Either grease your tins or line them with muffins papers.

Beat the eggs and sugar in a large bowl until it's lighter in color and has grown in volume. Add the pumpkin puree and oil, and beat again.

Add the baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt to the bowl and mix well. Add the flour and stir slowly until mostly blended. While there are still some white streaks add the chocolate chunks/chips. I would not use full size chips if you're making mini muffins. And the unique shapes that chopping a bar of chocolate adds was pretty cool in the muffins, something I would definitely do again.

Add the batter to the muffin tins, filling about 2/3 of the way full. Bake in your 350 degree oven for 20 minutes, until a tester comes clean (or they spring back when you touch them - with mini muffins, especially, I go for the touch test when baking). Let the muffins cool a couple minutes, then remove them from their pans. If your muffins are stuck to the pans, check out my cool solution. Because, yes, some of my muffins stuck. I successfully rescused them all, however.

Enjoy this and more with Blessed With Grace and Tempt My Tummy Tuesday. Also posting now with A Southern Fairytale and her Mouthwatering Monday.