Welcome to the Integrated Fitness Cooking Show
Today we are featuring Paleo Pumpkin Muffins…. And they are good…
Hi everybody I am Chris with integrated fitness and we are back here in another nutritional segment. This week we are going to show you how to make a paleo friendly pumpkin muffin.And here we are approaching October, into fall, leaves are changing and we are starting to think about pumpkin pies and turkeys and apples and all that good stuff.
So sticking with the season I thought we would do a paleo variation of something I love very much. Very quickly it’s a very simple recipe, but I will caution you like with every baking dish you do, you have to be very specific with your measurements and your ingredients. So we’ll kind of go through them step by step here before we mix them in and you can jot them down on a list and we’ll go from there. We’re going to start with almond meal flour. We try to stay away from the wheat flours and the gluten flours.
This gluten free, I will caution you, almond meal is a little bit more expensive than regular flour, however it is a lot better for you and you use half as much. So we are going to take that almond meal flour, one and a half cups. I have actually got that set aside in a bowl here, and I am going to dump that one and a half cups right in there. When I am baking I have learned to always stick with dry ingredients first.
Mix those before you put the wet in. So we are going to go with a teaspoon of baking powder, a teaspoon of baking soda, and then for the spice I have got something called allspice. Now what allspice is, it’s a mix of sage, cinnamon and nutmeg. So it is basically all of the key components that go into a pumpkin pie, and I have got about two tablespoons, and that is all you will need because allspice is very pungent, very strong. That is pretty much it for the dry ingredients and what you want to do is mix that up, before you put the wet ingredients in there, otherwise things tend to stick and it is hard to get a good mix if you don’t do this prior. That’s what grandma told me anyway.
So that being finished we are going to take a cup of pumpkin, this is just pureed pumpkin. You can find this at Giant Eagle or any grocery store you go to, I have chosen the organic type. I try to stay organic as often as possible. Throw that in there, then half a cup of honey, that’s our substitute for sugar. If you don’t like your muffins as sweet, you can dial back the honey a little bit. We are going to go with 3 eggs, throw those in there, and by the way the 1st thing I did was preheat the oven to 350 and you want to get that started before you start mixing your ingredients.
Typically ovens take 10 minutes to warm up. So 3 eggs, a half a cup of pumpkin, you got your honey and your dry ingredients we went over before. You are going to give that a real good mix so that everything is blended together really well. You can use an electric mixer if you want to save yourself, but why not make a workout out of it, right? Mix that together and it is going to have a cake batter consistency. Then you are going to add that to a muffin tin, throw it in the oven for 20 minutes and then you are good to go.
Okay so we are going to add the batter to these tins here, and I go about half way up when I am doing muffins. Some different variations to these, if you want to add a protein element, go ahead and add a few scoops of vanilla protein powder to these, that’s going to give you that variable.
If you want to throw an almond on top of these you could certainly do that. If you have got to have that chocolate fix you can dust it with unsweetened cocoa powder, to throw that taste in there. Give it a good shake to get the air bubbles out of it and you are ready to go into the oven.
So 350 degrees, for 20 minutes. I always tell people be cautious when it comes to cooking time because all ovens are different. Depending on the quality of your oven, the time component can change just a little bit. What you are basically looking for is that muffin to overflow the top. Okay, so 20 minutes, pop them out of the oven and you want to let them sit for another 10-15 minutes and they’ll be ready to eat. Paleo friendly pumpkin muffins, enjoy!
