Vegan Pumpkin Muffins

October is the month of kabocha in my kitchen — roasted, simmered, pureed into soup, baked into muffins. The squash is the season's anchor, the ingredient that says autumn more clearly than any calendar. I bought four kabocha at the market and lined them up on the counter like small green sentinels, and Miya pointed at them and said, "Obaachan squash," because in this house, kabocha will always be Obaachan's squash, connected to Ken's garden and Fumiko's kitchen and the taste memory of every autumn I have lived.

I made kabocha muffins this week — a fusion, not Fumiko's — with mashed kabocha, brown sugar, cinnamon, and a swirl of black sesame on top. They were Portland meets Japan in a paper cup, the kind of food I invent on Tuesday afternoons when the inspiration hits and the kabocha is already roasted. I brought them to Miya's preschool and the teachers and children ate them and the teacher said, "You should sell these," and I said, "Maybe," which is a word that used to mean no and is starting to mean something else.

The essay was accepted. The food magazine said yes. Not just yes — enthusiastically yes, with praise for the grandmother section, which they called "devastating and tender." They will publish it in the winter issue. They are paying me four hundred dollars, which is more than the seventy-five from the first essay and which, more importantly, represents a trajectory — from seventy-five to four hundred, from unknown to known, from "maybe someone will read this" to "someone already has and they said yes." The trajectory is the thing. The trajectory points toward the book.

I told Brian. He said, "Congratulations," and hugged me. The hug was genuine. The congratulations was genuine. The genuineness made me sad, because it reminded me that Brian is not a bad man. He is a man who cannot reach me and whom I cannot reach, and the inability to reach is not malice. It is the particular tragedy of two people who started in the same place and walked in different directions and turned around one day to find the distance uncrossable. He is not a bad man. He is a man who drinks too much and loves too quietly and does not read my writing and does not understand my cooking and does not know that the hug he just gave me was the loneliest moment of my week.

The muffins I brought to Miya’s preschool that Tuesday were built around roasted kabocha, but the spirit of them — the warmth, the spice, the wanting to feed people something that means something — lives just as fully in these vegan pumpkin muffins. The week the essay was accepted, I made another batch. I swirled black sesame across the tops and thought about trajectories, about the word “maybe,” and about what it means to make something with your hands and have the world say yes.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 22 minutes | Total Time: 37 minutes | Servings: 12 muffins

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 cup pumpkin puree (or roasted kabocha, mashed smooth)
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup neutral oil (such as avocado or refined coconut)
1/4 cup unsweetened plant-based milk (oat or almond)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 tablespoon black sesame seeds, for topping (optional)

Instructions

Preheat the oven. Heat your oven to 375°F (190°C). Line a standard 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners or lightly grease each cup.
Mix the dry ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves until evenly combined.
Mix the wet ingredients. In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the pumpkin puree, brown sugar, oil, plant-based milk, and vanilla extract until smooth and uniform.
Combine. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold together with a rubber spatula until just combined — a few streaks of flour are fine. Do not overmix, or the muffins will be tough.
Fill and top. Divide the batter evenly among the 12 muffin cups, filling each about three-quarters full. Sprinkle black sesame seeds over the tops of each muffin if using.
Bake. Bake for 20–22 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean and the tops spring back lightly when pressed.
Cool. Let the muffins rest in the tin for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. They are best the day they are baked but keep well in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

Nutrition (per serving)

Vegan Pumpkin Muffins — The Muffins That Made Someone Say “You Should Sell These”