Start your day with these hardy and filling muffins bursting with flavor and mellow sweetness from nature’s own maple sugar. Great afternoon snack, too. 

Yield: 12 muffins

Ingredients

• Muffin liners
• Nonstick cooking spray
• 2 cups all-purpose unbleached flour (can substitute whole wheat for 1 cup)
• 1 1/2 cup quick cooking rolled oats
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• 15 oz can pumpkin puree
• 1 cup sweetened almond milk
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 1/2 cup maple syrup

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place muffin liners in muffin tray and spray each liners lightly with non-stick cooking spray.
2. Mix dry ingredients from the flour to the cloves in a large mixing bowl.
3. Stir pumpkin, almond milk and vanilla extract together in a smaller bowl.
4. Whisk eggs together in another small bowl just until well blended. Mix eggs into wet mixture.
5. Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until batter is smooth and well combined. Scoop batter into prepared muffin liners until rounded (batter is thick enough to do this.
6. If desired, sprinkle tops with granulated sugar or bake as is in preheated oven until toothpick inserted into the middle of a muffin comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Set aside to cool before removing from muffin tray.

Adapted from Allrecipes.com (October Oatmeal Pumpkin Muffins)

Each muffin contains 186 calories.