Pumpkin Spice Muffins

What ho, it's the first day of lovely fall today! As I was hiking with my sister and niece last Sunday near the Boundary Waters in Ely, MN a more picturesque and lovely fall scene would have been difficult to find. The leaves had just started to rust and brighten, and they were slowly falling every few seconds. 

My  niece asked me what my favorite part of that day was, and I had to say her first soccer game, because little uncoordinated people are just hilarious. She told me it was our hike, and it thrilled me to the bone that she got our genetic love for the outdoors at such an early age.

Here's my lovely sister Kels and niece JC on one of our hikes. She looks bored out of her little blonde skull with her human transport. I suggested we both carry her caravan style and feed her grapes and she just looked at me like I was nuts. It turns out  3 year old's kinda stink at sarcasm.

To celebrate this most glorious of seasons I had to make something with pumpkin in it. After much internal debate and recipe card  shuffling, I decided on good old-fashioned pumpkin spice muffins.

Pumpkin Spice Muffins

- 3 cups flour 

-1 cup sugar

-1 1/2 cups buttermilk

-1 cup canola oil

- 1 cup pumpkin

-1 t cinnamon

-1/4 t. cloves

-1/2 t. nutmeg

-1 t. ginger

-1 t. salt

-1 t. baking soda

-1 T baking powder

Directions:  Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine dry ingredients except for sugar in a medium mixing bowl, and in another bowl combine sugar, buttermilk, canola oil and pumpkin, whisking to combine. Fold wet mixture into dry until just combined, then spoon mixture into greased muffin tins. Bake 20-30 minutes, until toothpick inserted inside comes out clean.

Oh yeah, that's right.
 A dozen delicious muffins to have for breakfast, lunch, and everything in between this week. Maybe I will bring some for the break room too.

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This muffin has a moist, rich pumpkin flavor and a spicy, cozy aroma. I've put all kinds of things in these before, but I thought best to move slowly into fall baking and just make a plain-jane pumpkin spice muffin. I always heat these up first, and you can put a little butter or cream cheese on top for an extra sumthin sumthin if you're into that kinda thing, because I know I am.
Enjoy!