Fall has officially begun, even if the weather hasn’t quite caught up with the news, so what kind of baker would I be if I didn’t give in to mother nature and start baking with pumpkin? The King Arthur Flour Bakealong Challenge this month was Inside Out Pumpkin Muffins. After my successful Bakealong last month (complete with an Instagram shoutout from KAF themselves!) I was excited to dive back in. My friend Whitney and I have been talking about doing some long distance baking together for awhile now, so this was also the perfect time to give that a try! So at 2 PM eastern we both started making the muffins in our respective Boston and VA residences.
The recipe called for a special KAF ingredient: boiled cider. You could sub dark corn syrup or honey if you didn’t have the cider syrup, but last week KAF ran a $3 shipping special, so I took that as a sign that I should stock up on the real deal (along with a few other items :-)). I’m glad I did! The cider has a rich and slightly tart apple flavor that smells and tastes like fall. I did have to call one audible though. Hubs had polished off the last of our milk, so I used heavy cream instead (in the end it was just fine to do so)!
You make the muffins in 3 parts. The flour/oat/sugar/butter streussel topping:
The cream cheese/sugar/vanilla filling:
And, of course, the batter!
I was surprised you didn’t really need an electric mixer for any of these steps. Not even the filling! I’m always used to whipping cream cheese when I’m baking with it, but I trust the King!
I followed their instructions to grease the inside of my cupcake liners (spoiler alert: this is a great tip that I will always use moving forward) and filled the cups with a heaping tablespoon cookie scoop of batter, a level scoop of filling, another heaping scoop on top of the filling, and a level scoop of streussel. The only area where I had a snafu was the filling. I only made it to 10.5, so I just pinched a little off from each of those to provide the last 1.5.
In they went and, a short time later, out they came!
They smelled so good I could hardly resist taking them out and eating them right away! I’m a sucker for the smell of any fresh baked goods that contain cinnamon, cloves, and ginger (probably because that’s the scent of my signature molasses cookies). Fortunately Whit and I had a nice phone chat that kept me distracted until it was time to sample.
We were both pleased with our results! My only negative is that the cream cheese was a little sharp for me. Reading the recipe notes at the bottom that they sometimes use their cinnamon cider spread as a filling made me wish I had done the same. Oh well! Next time 🙂
We both posted the same picstitch of our long distance #bestiebakealong and KAF commented on both!!
Words can’t describe how much I love KAF, so they hit the nail on the head there 🙂
So all in all a great fall recipe that I would make again (but maybe with a slightly tweaked filling). Whit and I both agreed that the streussel topping was the highlight because it gives such a nice little crunch to what is otherwise a very moist muffin!
So Sunday morning I find myself with the remainder of the pumpkin puree and me headed out of town on Monday. I didn’t want to leave the puree to maybe go bad while I was away so I opted to make a small batch of pumpkin doughnuts.
The recipe contained ingredients very similar to the muffins, so I knew they would taste good. Making baked doughnuts takes no time at all, so they were done quickly and ready for toppings. The recipe recommended dredging them in cinnamon sugar to coat them, so I did that for 1/3 of them. For the next 1/3 I drizzled some of the remaining boiled cider on top of them, and for the final 1/3 I did a basic glaze and sprinkled sweet and salty caramel sugar on top.
Because I’m such a sweet tooth I have to say the caramel sugar and glaze was my favorite. Cinnamon sugar was sort of neutral since both of those flavors were in the doughnuts to begin with and the boiled cider made them a little more tart and less overtly sweet. But given how tasty they all were and how relatively small they were (I’m convinced my doughnut pan is smaller than average due to it always producing more than a recipe says it will) we gobbled them up in no time!
So all in all a delicious and pumpkin filled weekend!
Little Biddle Bakery 