It all started when I went for a walk this morning. Fall is in the air in a big way around here. It felt and sounded so good to kick through the drifts of leaves along the side of the road. I started thinking about the special smells and tastes of fall . . . and then I started craving pumpkin muffins with cream cheese.

This afternoon the cold rain began . . . and I SO felt like having a pumpkin muffin alongside a cup of green tea . . . and started thinking about how good the house would smell if I baked some pumpkin muffins . . . and soon found myself preheating the oven to 350. I did an Internet search for gluten-free pumpkin muffins, and some of the recipes I found sure sounded and looked delicious, but I didn’t have all the ingredients on hand. Remember the part about the cold rain? I was NOT interested in going out to the store. So, I combined a few recipes and adapted them to incorporate the ingredients I had.

They really turned out quite delicious! But, wouldn’t you know it – I had no cream cheese – ugh! But the muffins were quite moist enough to eat without anything on them.  The recipe made 30 muffins, most of which are now heading to the freezer.

Ingredients

1 cup rice flour (I used white)

1 cup sorghum flour

1 cup tapioca flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons xanthum gum

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice (or 1/2 teaspoon each of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger)

1 29-ounce can of pumpkin (not the pie filling stuff – just pumpkin)

2/3 cup vegetable oil

4 eggs

2 and 1/2 cups sugar

Whisk together the pumpkin, eggs, oil and sugar. In a separate bowl, mix together the rest of the ingredients. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ones, just until combined. It will be a fairly stiff batter.

Fill muffin cups 3/4 full, and bake for about 25 minutes.

*Note: I made a struesel -type topping and sprinkled it over the muffins before baking. This was 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, 1/4 cup brown sugar, and 1 tablespoon cinnamon.

After baking, let muffins sit in the muffin pan for about 5 minutes before carefully removing them to a cooling rack.

Pumpkin and walnuts are really good for you. All that sugar–not so much! I need to come up with a way to reduce the sugar in the recipe next time.

This worked for me; using what I had in the house. For more Works-for-me-Wednesday ideas visit We are That Family.