Spiced pumpkin muffins

“How can you eat that so early in the morning?” asked my friend. She gestured with a fork at the plate in front of me, which contained a softball-sized muffin dotted with pockets of cream cheese, chocolate, and nuts.

“That’s not breakfast,” she continued. “It’s dessert.” She had a point, though this was years ago when we were young, and back then I could afford to consume loads of sugar in the early hours. These days, not so much.

Muffins are still a treat. When I bake them, however, I keep them contained to a more reasonable size. While huge muffins are now the norm, the muffin tins and recipes that I inherited from my family are more traditional in scale.

This time of year, pumpkin-based foods are ubiquitous. What’s interesting about my family’s collection of recipes is that we don’t have many that call for pumpkin. Though there are plenty that call for sweet potatoes instead.

Pumpkins and sweet potatoes share many similarities. They have a similar hue and a similar texture when baked. Their bland sweetness also makes a good canvas for warm, woody spices such as cinnamon.

When I search through my collection of recipes, if I find one calling for sweet potato, I know that I can easily swap in pumpkin. And yes, I had a sweet potato muffin recipe in my files. Taking canned pumpkin puree, I replaced it with the sweet potatoes.

Cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and clove flavored the batter, and I stirred in chopped pecans for crunch. The batch came together easily, and while there are eggs in the batter, it has no milk or butter making the muffins friendly for those who can’t have dairy. The result was a fine, tender bite.

These are a simple muffin. While I could easily embellish them with cream cheese, chocolate, or a buttery, crunchy streusel, for this batch, I’ve decided to leave them as a simple breakfast bread and not transform them into dessert.