Whole Wheat Flour-Pumpkin-Jaggery Muffins

Whole Wheat Flour-Pumpkin Muffins

Moist Pumpkin Muffins

Muffins are great for breakfast and accompaniment with evening tea. Give them some decoration and they serve as healthy dessert also. I prefer using unrefined sugar or jaggery. Jaggery with pumpkin blends very well and adds to the moist texture and dark color both of which make the muffins very appealing. I used olive oil but because I wanted to reduce the saturated fat content in muffins.

Since I used the muffin paper bases without placing them in the muffin baking tray slots thus while baking was on the paper base spread thus making the muffins look more like cupcakes, nevertheless the denseness and the moistness was perfect.

Preparation Time: 20min

Baking Time: 20-30min

Servings:9 Muffins weighing 50 gm each

Nutritional Value/ Muffin: (Approximate values)

calories: 450

Carbohydrates: 20gm

Protein: 0.84gm

Cholesterol: 0

Fat: 8gm

Dietary fibers: 2gm

Vitamin A: 1133 I U

Vitamin C: 2mg

Vitamin E: 0.22mg

Vitamin K: 0.022mg

Folates: 2.6mcg

Riboflavin: 0.02mg

Niacin: 0.11mg

K: 50mg

Na: 8.1mg

Calcium: 2.2mg

Iron: 3mg

Carotenes and many other phyto-nutrients.

Ingredients Required For making Pumpkin Muffins:

• 150 gm. Unbleached Whole Wheat Flour
• 1 Teaspoon baking Powder
• 1/2Teaspoon baking Soda (Cooking soda)
• 75 gm Organic Jaggery
• 250 gm. Ripe Pumpkin (unpeeled/ 200 gm Peeled)
• 1/4Teaspoon of Salt
• 1 Medium Size egg (My egg weighed50 gm)
• 30 ml. Olive oil (I used extra virgin)

For Muffin Spice:

•  1/4 Inch Piece of Nutmeg
•  2 Inches of Cinnamon stick)
• 2 Cloves
• 2 Green Cardamoms
• 1 Black Cardamom
• 15-20 Black Currents
• 2 Bay leafs
• 50 ml milk (I used low fat)

Directions For making Pumpkin Muffins:

• Boil bay leafs in milk till milk reduces to half. Cover it and allow to cool at room temperature.
• Pound
• Nutmeg 
• Cinnamon
• Cardamoms
• Cloves to powder (It will be slightly coarse)
• Stir this mixture and keep aside for further use.
• Cut the black currants to two halves and keep aside.
• Sieve flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and keep aside.
• Peel and cut the pumpkin.
• Boil it with as little water as possible, till it becomes soft. If any juices are left do not drain it. Try to cook on low heat till most of the juice in the pan dries but make sure the pumpkin does not get burnt or become dry. Only extra juice has to be dried.
• Cool the cooked pumpkin and puree it by pulsing it in a blender.
• Whisk
• Egg
• Jaggery
• Olive oil
• 10 m milk in which bay leafs were boiled, using a hand blender, till the mixture becomes uniform and smooth. It does not need to be fluffy.
• Add the pumpkin puree and whisk for one minute.
• Add black currant pieces to the mixture of flour and mix them nicely, so that the black currant pieces are coated with flour.

Wet and Dry Mixture For Muffins

• Add half of the flour mixture with black currants to the wet mixture and whisk it to make a smooth paste.

After half Of The Dry Mixture Is Added

• Add rest of the half flour mixture and again whisk lightly to make a uniform and smooth batter.

Thickness of Final Batter

• Do not whisk too much as we do not want to incorporate too much air in it. Over whisking will be the cause of muffins not rising.
• Add 10 ml of milk (room temperature) and mix. The batter should be thicker than the cake batter.
• With a ladle scoop the batter in pumpkin bases and bake at 170 degree centigrade for 15-20 min or till the skewer comes out clean.

Muffins Baking

• Enjoy the healthy-Whole wheat flour-Pumpkin Muffins with a hot cup of tea/coffee or fill them and top them with chocolate ganache and have it for dessert. Yummy

Whole Wheat Flour-Pumpkin-Jaggery Muffins

Pumpkin Muffins 

Tips;

• The baking time differs by 4-5 minutes depending upon the type of oven used. Thus after 15 minutes check for the doneness of the cake. It should not take more than 20 minutes.
• Requirement of milk may change due to the difference in the moisture content of pumpkin and the quality of wheat flour. Since I Do not discard the chaff from the flour thus the milk content is 20 ml. Thus check for the thickness of batter before adding milk in last step.
• Make sure the batter is not like a cake batter. Muffin batter is always thicker.
• If the egg is large then take only half egg white.

Alternate Suggestions:

• Roasted nuts can be added to the flour mixture along with the currants.
• I have tried to make puree of pumpkin without removing the peeling. The puree was slightly grainy but I was happy with the texture of Muffins made with it. Best part is not loss of nutrients takes place if the peel is not removed.
• Jaggery can be replaced with Brown sugar (unrefined sugar).