The creation of these Paleo Pumpkin Muffins or Dessert Bites ensure that I get to keep the title of being the most basic friend among my group. If you’re not sure what exactly that means you can head on over to Urban Dictionary for the most hilarious/degrading meanings of the term, but we typically use it to describe a “typical” girl: yoga pants, UGG boots, and Starbucks coffee, which around the holidays is always a Pumpkin Spice Latte. Basic girls love pumpkin around the holidays! It’s all in good fun and I do my best to live up to my role (joking).
ANYWAYSSSSS, I do love pumpkin spice around the holiday, but most recipes and treats take the health out of eating pumpkin and make it a sugary dessert. Pumpkin is actually pretty good for your health and low calorie, so finding healthy versions to munch on during the holidays instead of the treats can be beneficial to your diet and your health. This is a pretty easy recipe for anyone to follow, and these can be eaten as a dessert, or a breakfast muffin.
For this recipe you will need:
1 can pumpkin puree
2 bananas (the more ripe the better)
1/4 cup honey
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
Dash of sea salt
Preheat your oven to 350 F.
It is easiest to use a hand blender to mix the ingredients, but if you’d rather get a workout, feel free to use a wooden spoon. Mash your bananas first, and then blend in the other ingredients.
I used a small muffin pan to make pumpkin bites, but you can easily make bigger pumpkin muffins, or a pumpkin loaf from this recipe. Quick tip if you’re doing muffins, use liners! I did not, and these are very moist, so hard to get out of the pan AND leave a mess behind that takes forever to clean. And yes, I greased the pan before hand, so that wasn’t the issue.
I’ve learned lately that not all ovens are created equal, and that even my oven does not bake things in the same pan equally, SO, bake for about 10 minutes, and then do the toothpick test. If when poking through all the way to the bottom of the pan the toothpick comes out clean, you’re done! If not, give them a few more minutes and repeat until they are done. Mini muffins will cook the least amount of time, muffins longer, a loaf the longest.
If you are just looking to make Paleo Pumpkin muffins, you’re done! This should make 24 bite size treats. Your nutrition for one bite is:
Cal: 29
Fat: 0g
Carbs: 7g
Sugar: 5g
Protein: 0g
To spruce these up and make them more of a Paleo Pumpkin dessert, add some Paleo Whipped Cream! I had to experiment a bit to get the right consistency on this, but posted what finally worked for me. With 1 Tbsp. Paleo Whipped Cream on top, your nutrition becomes:
Cal: 51
Fat: 2g
Carbs: 8g
Sugar: 6g
Protein: 1g
