What better way to start Thanksgiving Day than with easy, oven-fresh muffins? These moist, deep-gold pumpkin muffins can be ready in under an hour, with a minimum of effort. Generously studded with cranberries and cinnamon bits, they're a wonderful salute to Thanksgiving's favorite flavors.
Grease 12 wells of a standard muffin pan; or line with papers, and grease the papers.
In a large bowl whisk together the pumpkin, eggs, brown sugar, oil, molasses, salt, spices, milk, and cinnamon chips or bits. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl.
Whisk the flour, baking powder, and baking soda together. Stir in the dried cranberries. Add all at once to the wet ingredients and mix until all ingredients are well combined.
Cover the bowl, and let the batter rest for 30 minutes, while you preheat your oven to 400°F.
Deposit the batter by the generous 1/4-cupful (a slightly heaped muffin scoop works well here) into the prepared pan. If you have a scale, each muffin will be about 90g, about 3 1/8 ounces. Sprinkle the top of each muffin with about 1/2 teaspoon coarse sparkling sugar or Swedish pearl sugar.
Bake the muffins for 20 to 21 minutes, until a toothpick or cake tester inserted into the middle of a center muffin comes out clean.
Remove the muffins from the oven, and tilt them in their individual wells to cool; this prevents their bottoms from steaming and becoming tough. Serve warm, or at room temperature.
Another tasty addition to these muffins are Jammy Bits, sweet, soft little morsels of fruit purée. Orange or apricot Jammy Bits marry nicely with cranberry.
This recipe makes a generous amount of batter. If your standard muffin pan is on the small size, you may find you'll have batter left over to make a couple of extra muffins. If you do have a smallish muffin pan and want to avoid an extra bake, simply cut back the chips and cranberries to 2/3 cup each.
Want to use fresh pumpkin purée rather than canned? It’s simple to make your own; see how it’s done.
