Gluten-Free, Vegan Pumpkin Spice Muffins

Over here in Minnesota, fall is in full swing. The leaves are changing and it’s a balmy 43 degrees and raining this morning. Not my preferred weather (give me 80s and sun all day every day!), but it does leave me yearning for all things warm and comforting.

You know what that means! It’s time for some pumpkin spice.

I know, I know. Everyone and their mom gets crazy about pumpkin spice this time of year. I’m actually the kind of person who enjoys it year round, but I do tend to do more baking in the fall and winter.

With the cold morning, it’s the perfect opportunity to heat up the oven and make some pumpkin muffins.

Good news about this recipe: It’s quick!! It typically takes me about ten minutes to mix everything up and get them in the oven. This makes about 9 muffins so feel free to scale up if needed.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 Cup plus 2 TBS Bob’s Red Mill 1:1 baking flour (the blue bag!)

• 1 1/2 tsp Baking powder

• 1/4 tsp Salt

• 1 tsp Cinnamon

• 1/4 tsp Ground ginger

• 1/4 tsp Nutmeg

• 1/4 Cup softened or melted coconut oil

• 1/2 Cup pure maple syrup

• 3/4 Cup canned pumpkin puree

Let’s Get Baking!

Before you start with the ingredients, preheat the oven to 350. Remember, I said this recipe is easy peasy and goes very fast!

First up, you’re going to mix up all your dry ingredients. That’s your flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg.

I’ll make an important note here, Bob’s Red Mill makes a couple different gluten-free flour mixes. They are not all created equally. For this we need the blue bag, if you grab the red bag it will throw off the texture and, more importantly, the taste.

After you’ve got the dry ingredients mixed well, grab another bowl to mix the coconut oil, maple syrup and pumpkin puree. I used Matter Farms pumpkin spice infused maple syrup, I was really happy with the extra flavor boost it provided, but regular maple syrup will work here as well.

Couple things to look out for at this step, make sure you’re using pure pumpkin and not pumpkin pie filling. The pie filling will have a lot of extra ingredients we don’t need. The other thing, is that if your syrup is cold, it may cause your coconut oil to solidify as you mix. Either use the back of your spoon to smooth out any lumps, or if your bowl is microwave safe you can heat it up for 30 seconds at a time until it melts back down and mixes together easier.

Now you’ve got your two bowls of mixed up goodness, it’s time to combine them! You want a smooth batter with no visible clumps of flour.

Now you’re ready to fill that muffin tin! I found some adorable fall themed liners that were just waiting for this moment. I like to use an ice cream scoop to fill them. It helps make them all even sizes and it a relatively mess free method.

Now you’re ready to pop them in the oven! They typically take between 25-30 minutes. If you’re questioning if they’re done, put them in a few minutes longer. No one likes biting into undercooked muffins and these are already a pretty moist muffin.

I know it’s tempting to eat them straight from the oven, but if you let them sit for 2-3 hours, they are less likely to be gummy in the middle. Truthfully, I still don’t care and often eat them while piping hot, but that’s a you choice.

These will stay good on the counter for a few days, but they also freeze great!

What about you? Are you pro pumpkin spice? Let me know in the comments!