Pumpkin Banana Muffins

Happy weekend, all! The hot topic in much of the northeast is the SNOW we got this past weekend! In Boston, we ended up getting much less than predicted so it didn't really affect us too much. But it is pretty darn chilly out there! To combat today's chilly weather, I've been doing some baking...some "surprise" chocolate cupcakes (recipe coming later!) and I'm about to make some homemade applesauce with some really yummy apples I picked yesterday at Drew Farms here in MA. Love love love the smell of applesauce cooking on the stove...

Enough rambling though - onto the recipe at hand, pumpkin banana muffins! 

This was a fun new recipe to try. I love both pumpkin and banana flavors but had never actually thought to put them together. Brilliant! The end result was a fluffy, moist muffin that had hints of each flavor but wasn't overpowering really one way or another. I found this recipe through Foodbuzz, and it's a recipe from a blog called Alida's Kitchen. The recipe is actually for pumpkin banana bread but I made muffins instead. It's an incredibly easy recipe - and healthy too!

Ingredients:

-1 cup all-purpose flour

-1 cup white whole wheat flour

-1/2 cup brown sugar, packed

-1 tsp. baking powder

-1/2 tsp. baking soda

-1 tsp. cinnamon

-1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice (I added my own mixture of cloves, nutmeg, and ginger here)

-2 bananas, mashed

-1 cup canned pumpkin

-1/4 cup canola oil

-2 eggs

-1 tsp. vanilla

-1 tablespoon brown sugar (for topping, optional)

-1 tsp. cinnamon (for topping, optional)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray loaf pan or line muffin pan with paper liners. Set aside.

In a large bowl, mix together the flours, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and spices. In a medium bowl, whisk together the bananas, pumpkin, oil, eggs, and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients to the banana-pumpkin mixture, and gently fold until combined. If using, combine the sugar and cinnamon for topping (I did not use this).

Pour batter into prepared pan(s). Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar, if desired. Bake for 40-45 minutes for a loaf, or about 15 - 17 minutes for muffins (that's how long mine took anyway!), or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan for 5 minutes. Remove and let cool completely on a wire rack. For me, this made about one dozen regularly sized muffins and a dozen mini ones too.

These were excellent served warm, and I thought they were actually better one to two days after I baked them as opposed to the day of baking. So, if you have the patience, I recommend waiting until the next day to eat them. ;-) The flavors seemed to come through more after a day or two.

cute lil' mini!

fun Halloween muffin liner...

I actually completely forgot to take more pictures of these tasty treats! I baked them the night before heading up to VT to spend a couple days with my family, who was vacationing up there. I brought the muffins with me, and we all enjoyed them the next morning yet I forgot to take pics! I guess being out of my usual environment through me off. :)

Hopefully I'll be back again soon!