Perfect Whole Wheat Pumpkin Muffins

“Your Dorie Greenspan pumpkin muffin recipe looks pretty good, but I can do better.”

Them’s fightin’ words! I thought, when an e-mail arrived from Beth in San Francisco. But I appreciated her confidence. No prevarication, no namby-pamby maybe-give-this- recipe-a-try-if-you-like introduction from her, thank you very much. The bold endorsement grabbed me as much as the ingredient list. Just a quarter cup of fat? One hundred percent whole wheat flour? All those fall spices, my favorites?

So Beth sold me, would she have sold you, too? Here’s what she wrote:

“I usually scoff at recipes calling for oil and water instead of buttermilk and, well, butter. But I do not scoff at recipes with stone-ground whole wheat flour that still turn out to be perfectly – and I mean perfectly – moist and utterly, utterly creamy and amazing in your mouth. They are easy but they always turn out. You can make them any size you like, they can be turned into cupcakes by adding cream cheese frosting. Take them to an event and everybody begs for the recipe.

“Give them a shot; they are one of the best recipes I have ever laid my hands on.” And so I did.

The first batch, by accident I used pumpkin pie filling instead of 100% pumpkin puree. Wowza. You know how recipes, including mine, always say, “Buy the pure pumpkin puree, not the pumpkin pie filling.”? Well, I’m here to tell you, pumpkin pie filling works just fine in this recipe, in fact, I might recommend the spice-forward and chewy-crusted muffins if you’re headed in the cream-cheese frosting cupcake direction.

I should have known. Didn’t Beth say, “These muffins always work out.”?

The second batch, I did a healthy makeover of the Starbucks Cream Cheese Pumpkin muffins that are oh-so-tempting looking but yikes, add up to 470 calories and get this! A total of 11 Weight Watchers points!

The third batch, I kept simple, topping only with a few pumpkin seeds. The fourth batch, I did four muffins of each variation! The fifth and sixth batches, I just enjoyed each and every muffin, straight out of the oven and even, get this, up to four and five days later, they’re still fresh!

So yes, I have a brand-new pumpkin muffin recipe -- I've made muffins four times in four weeks with the new recipe, versus one in four years with the old recipe, if that tells you anything. The new recipe has just half the calories, half the Weight Watchers points and you heard it here, first: Wowza!!

Kitchen Parade is written by second-generation food columnist Alanna Kellogg and features fresh, seasonal dishes for every-day healthful eating and occasional indulgences. Do you have a favorite recipe that other Kitchen Parade readers might like? Just send me a quick e-mail via recipes@kitchen-parade.com. How to print a Kitchen Parade recipe. Never miss a recipe! If you like this recipe, sign up for a free e-mail subscription. If you like Kitchen Parade, you're sure to like my food blog about vegetable recipes, too, A Veggie Venture. Follow Kitchen Parade on Facebook!