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Overloading the Machine
Pumpkin Muffins
Based on the Vegan with a Vengeance recipe by Isa Chandra Moskowitz
Makes 1 dozen muffins.
- 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 1/4 cups sugar
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon ground or freshly grated nutmeg
- 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
- 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1 cup pureed pumpkin (fresh or from a can; do not use pumpkin pie mix)
- 1/2 cup soy milk
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 2 tablespoons molasses
Preheat oven to 400F. Lightly grease a twelve-muffin tin.
Sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and spices. In a separate bowl, whisk together pumpkin, soy milk, oil, and molasses. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix.
Fill the muffin cups two-thirds full. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick or knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
Notes
Made these on 2006.12.07, without any of the variations below. They're very good. The cooking time in my oven was just a smidge over 18 minutes, and they could probably have done with a minute less.
Next time I should try adding the walnuts.
Variations
Fold in a cup of either chopped fresh cranberries or chopped walnuts, or a mixture of the two.
Well, anyway, I was reading this James Bond book, and right away I realized
that like most books, it had too many words. The plot was the same one that
all James Bond books have: An evil person tries to blow up the world, but
James Bond kills him and his henchmen and makes love to several attractive
women. There, that's it: 24 words. But the guy who wrote the book took
*thousands* of words to say it.
Or consider "The Brothers Karamazov", by the famous Russian alcoholic
Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It's about these two brothers who kill their father.
Or maybe only one of them kills the father. It's impossible to tell because
what they mostly do is talk for nearly a thousand pages. If all Russians talk
as much as the Karamazovs did, I don't see how they found time to become a
major world power.
I'm told that Dostoyevsky wrote "The Brothers Karamazov" to raise
the question of whether there is a God. So why didn't he just come right
out and say: "Is there a God? It sure beats the heck out of me."
Other famous works could easily have been summarized in a few words:
* "Moby Dick" -- Don't mess around with large whales because they symbolize
nature and will kill you.
* "A Tale of Two Cities" -- French people are crazy.
-- Dave Barry
This page was last modified on 2011 December 20.