Made these guys a lot over the past few weeks. I’m a fall dessert lover through and through. Any slight sign of cool weather and you’ll find me in my cozy sweater, Ugg slippers, hot bev in hand with some sort of pumpkin dessert. This is my new favorite.

I always try to test my recipes on others before posting. Because I have been into this healthy eating thing for over a decade. Don’t even have white or brown sugar or white flour in my house. So when I make a dessert I always wonder if it’s just my adapted taste buds that think it’s out of this world, or if they really are that good. Had these muffins around for Shabbat this past week. We had some close friends over for the weekend, and another couple of friends over in the afternoon. DEVOURED. Double taste check!!

Notable Ingredients

Here are some recipe notes before I dive in:

• coconut sugar can be found in every health food store in the country. I happen to really love the flavor of it because it has a little “caramel” depth to it. Kind of like a mix between regular white sugar and brown sugar if you ask me. It is extracted from the coconut palm sap and retains some of the minerals and nutrients in the palm itself. It also contains some fraction of inulin, a type of dietary fiber that can help gradually raise blood sugar levels as opposed to rapidly raise and decrease them. I won’t say that it is significantly superior to sugar. Both will still raise blood sugar levels. But I always feel better consuming unrefined sugar over a refined white sugar. The chemical processing is just not something I want to be eating regularly. So if I’m going to have a treat, I’d much prefer unrefined sugar options. But you can definitely replace the coconut sugar in the recipe with brown or regular sugar. Both will do the trick.
• Molasses: I wanted to do this recipe right. The flavor combo of molasses and pumpkin plus all the warm spices is just incredible. You can swap the molasses for date syrup though, if you need, A bit about blackstrap molasses nutritionally though: when the sugar cane undergoes its refining process, the molasses is the byproduct of the second boiling process involved. While sugar will go on to further processing, the blackstrap molasses still retains much nutritional value. It holds the lowest sugar content in comparison to all other sugar cane products. Believe it or not, many cultures view it as a superfood because of its high concentration of magnesium and calcium. 1 tbsp is said to reach almost 10% of the daily require value of each. Not telling you do go drink a cup full of molasses. It still is sugar. But at least it’s not just “pure” sugar.
• Pumpkin puree: You can definitely swap this for purees squash, or sweet potato. You can make your own by roasting chunks in A 200 degree celcius oven for 1-1.5 hours and then pureeing. Works like a charm.

Hope this recipe brings warmth to your holiday season this year. We all need a little bit of it now.

Xoxo

The season is here!! The week before Thanksgiving for us American’s in Israel needs to be filled with all the fall desserts. Especially since we are very lacking on the weather front here. Let’s just hope for a nice rainy night next Thursday.

This recipe was originally a dairy one that I made one Shabbat for a kiddush we were hosting. One of those recipes I kind of just through together with the things I had in the house. And it ended up being bomb. And people were licking the bowl clean.

Then I figured practically that I needed to make a non dairy version. Because a bowl of this heaven, on a chilly Friday night with a big cup of cinnamon tea. Just pure perfection. So I did. And it too was bomb. Like so bomb that the pictures I intended on taking the next day couldn’t happen because we had finished the whole pan. So I made another tray on Sunday. And the rest of the week we had this dessert available in the fridge for comfy movie nights. And with a scoop of vanilla ice cream guys. It should be illegal.

Recipe Variations

Ingredients wise, you should be able to find it all locally.

• I like the use of coconut sugar for a lower glycemic index profile, and truthfully I think it gives the dish a really caramelly profile. But if you don’t have on hand, you can definitely swap with some regular brown sugar.
• You can totally make this a gluten free recipe by swapping almond flour for the spelt flour. It adds a nice texture and still totally addictive.
• If you want the original dairy version, swap the oil for ghee or butter. Thank me later.

That’s all. Hope this Thanksgiving season bring great family time, comfy cozy nights, and is loaded with things to be grateful for.

Xoxo