the essential ingredient to making great muffins

The essential ingredient to making really great muffins, is to get very excited and do the muffin dance before you begin. Shake your hands above your head and sing as loud as you can, "We're making pumpkin muffins...we're making pumpkin muffins!" over and over.

Then shake like this:

and move your feet like this:

and your muffins will turn out perfect--guaranteed!

It was Ella's turn to bring the snack to preschool last week. She chose string cheese and her favorite muffins--pumpkin chocolate chip. There's a whole different set of dance moves when you add the chocolate chips to the batter and you have to yell even louder, "Add some chocolate chips...add some chocolate chips!" That's after you've sampled a few handfuls while Mom's not looking!

Ella really does get excited to help in the kitchen, which is so foreign to me. But we can't eat out all the time, so I have my tried and true--and always simple--recipes that I make. I love anything pumpkin. Even though it seems to be a fall thing, we make these simple muffins all year long. It's the best recipe I've found and for some reason they taste even better when you make the mini version. Ella and I thought we'd share the recipe.

PUMPKIN CHOCOLATE CHIP MUFFINS

3/4 cups sugar
1/4 cup canola oil
2 eggs
3/4 cup canned pumpkin
1/4 cup water
1 1/2 cups flour (I use whole wheat)
3/4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips (we like more, about 3/4 cup)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease and flour muffin tin or use paper liners. Mix sugar, oil and eggs in bowl. Add pumpkin and water. In separate bowl mix together the flour, soda, baking powder, spices and salt. Add to wet ingredients and mix. Stir in chocolate chips. Fill muffin cups 2/3 full with batter. Bake for 20-25 minutes.

Some helpful hints about making muffins:
If you're not using paper liners, these muffins come out of the pan much easier if you bake them for 20 minutes and then let them sit for about five minutes before removing.

The small Pampered Chef scoop fills mini muffins tins with just the right amount of batter.

A heaping scoop using the medium Pampered Chef scoop fills regular size muffin tins with just the right amount of batter.

(For those of you in my ward, Delayne Dayton sells Pampered Chef and puts in an order every so often. I love their scoops!)