Pumpkin has to be one of my favourite ingredients for a few reasons. Firstly, the smell of a fresh pumpkin when you cut into it is unbeatable. Second, you can roast the seeds. Third, the actual pumpkin can be roasted, boiled, baked and grilled. Now that fall has started, be prepared for pumpkin overload.

You can either use canned pumpkin purée, or boil the pumpkin and blend it to make your own. I used canned because it’s faster but both methods would work perfectly fine.

Using silken tofu in muffins is a good substitute for eggs, keeps the batter moist and if you choose to use a flavoured one it saves you the step of needing to add extracts or extra ingredients. This was my first time using almond tofu, and it has a strong taste which I hadn’t anticipated. It’s a good mix with the pumpkin, but if you’re not a huge fan of almond-flavoured products, I would go with a plain soft tofu.

Also, I don’t normally use muffin papers but I did for half the batch this time. I found that the bottoms of the muffins stuck a bit to the papers, but the ones that I baked in greased tins and my silicone muffin tins worked much better.

Ingredients

Makes 12 muffins

• 1 cup pumpkin purée
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 (300g) package of almond dessert tofu
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/8 tsp. salt
• 2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1 tsp. ground ginger
• 1/8 tsp. nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp. allspice

Method

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease or line 24 muffin tins.

In a large bowl, beat pumpkin, vegetable oil, tofu and brown sugar for 3 minutes. Set aside. In a separate medium-sized bowl, add remaining ingredients. Gently mix the dry ingredients together until well combined, then pour the dry mix into the tofu mix. Stir until combined and a batter-like consistency has been formed.  Fill each muffin tin 2/3 of the way full, allowing room for the muffin to rise once in the oven.

Bake muffins for 25-30 minutes until golden brown or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. Cool in baking pans and store in an airtight container.