Mini Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins -- Baking Into the Turn of the Season

September and the land is turning. The goldenrod is going over, the sumac lighting up, the food forest shifting from green to the mixed palette that means the growing season is settling into its last weeks. I've been in the habit of walking it at dusk lately, when the light comes in horizontal and everything casts a shadow, and there's a quality of attention that the place calls from me at that hour that I can't quite replicate at other times.

Tommy's third birthday is coming in two weeks and Kai and Sarah are driving down. I've been thinking about what the birthday will look like — not the party, but the moment. Tommy at three is a different creature than Tommy at two. He has full sentences now, has preferences and opinions and a developing sense of humor that comes through in the timing of his silences. He said "not yet" to a bowl of food the other day and waited exactly long enough before taking it to make the adults laugh, and then he smiled the smile of someone who has discovered a new tool.

I started the final round of revisions on the practical guide this week. The twelve graduates have sent their testing notes and I've been working through them one section at a time. Most of the notes are refinements — a clarification here, an assumption made explicit there. One graduate in Arkansas, a woman named Dara who grew up cooking from a big garden, said that the section on summer preservation assumed the reader already knew how to manage abundance emotionally, which is a skill as real as knowing how to use a pressure canner. She's right. I added half a page. The guide keeps teaching me by being read.

Walking the food forest at dusk this week, watching the sumac go red and the goldenrod go silver, I kept thinking about Dara’s note — that managing abundance emotionally is a skill as real as any technique — and I realized baking is one of the ways I do that for myself. The harvest doesn’t all fit in jars. Some of it needs to become something warm that you put on a plate for a three-year-old who has just discovered the power of a well-timed pause. These mini pumpkin chocolate chip muffins are what I made the evening I finished that half-page addition to the guide: small, spiced, just sweet enough, the kind of thing that marks a moment without making a fuss of it.

Mini Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 12 minutes | Total Time: 27 minutes | Servings: 36 mini muffins

Ingredients

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 3/4 cup pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/3 cup neutral oil (such as avocado or vegetable)
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup semi-sweet mini chocolate chips, divided

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven. Heat your oven to 350°F (175°C). Grease a 24-cup mini muffin tin (and a second 12-cup tin for the remaining batter) or line with mini paper liners.
2. Mix the dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves until evenly combined.
3. Mix the wet ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the pumpkin puree, granulated sugar, brown sugar, oil, eggs, and vanilla extract until smooth and well incorporated.
4. Combine. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir gently with a spatula until just combined — a few streaks of flour are fine. Do not overmix.
5. Fold in the chocolate chips. Reserve about 2 tablespoons of the mini chocolate chips, then fold the rest into the batter.
6. Fill the tins. Spoon the batter into the prepared mini muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full. Scatter the reserved chocolate chips over the tops.
7. Bake. Bake for 10–13 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean or with just a few moist crumbs.
8. Cool. Let the muffins rest in the tin for 5 minutes, then turn them out onto a wire rack to cool. They’re good warm and equally good the next morning.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 72 | Protein: 1g | Fat: 3g | Carbs: 10g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 65mg