Healthy Spiced Pumpkin Muffins

Many of us spend ages at Halloween carving out fun shapes in the pumpkins and putting candles inside to light up the dark. After the fun and games are over though, what do you do with your pumpkin? Many of them sadly are thrown away or thrown on the compost heap, but the truth is that they can be used for so much more. There are many pumpkin recipes out there that taste delicious and give your body that extra boost of veggie goodness.

If you can't use it all up at the time it will freeze too, roasting it first makes it easy to add straight into recipes when thawed out at a later date, great this way for making smoothies. This year the children decided to adapt a recipe they had found on the very popular Zoella blog, to make it more healthy. Different flour was used to avoid using the standard white variety, different sugar and only a quarter of the original sugar content was actually used. This did not affect the flavour at all, absolutely delicious! It's amazing what you can do when you play around with a recipe. Ingredients:

• 140g Organic wholemeal self raising flour 
• 140g Organic Buckwheat flour 
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon 
• 1/2 tsp grated nutmeg 
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger 
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves 
• (You can use 2 tsp of ground mixed spice instead of using separate spices if required) 
• 1/2 tsp of salt (we used Himalayan pink) 
• 110g organic grass fed butter 
• 50g molasses 
• 2 eggs 
• 180 ml organic full fat milk 
• 250g cooked and pureed pumpkin 
• 1 tsp baking powder 
• 1/2tsp bicarbonate of soda

Method

1. Preheat oven to 190c
2. Prepare 24 cupcake cases
3. Mix the flour, salt and baking powders in a bowl
4. Beat together the butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy
5. Add in the eggs one at a time, making sure they are well mixed in
6. Add in the milk and pumpkin puree and mix until well combined
7. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until combined
8. Fill the cupcakes cases to about 3/4 full with mixture
9. Place in your pre-heated oven and bake for 25 minutes, until golden brown

These really can be enjoyed at any time of day. They will freeze nicely too for you to enjoy when the fresh pumpkin is long gone!

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