Healthy Pumpkin Spice Muffins You'll Love

It's a rainy, warm, and muggy day in July (translation - movie day!), but inside my house it may as well be November! I've got my cozy pants on, fall scented candles burning, and pumpkin spice muffins in the oven. I just ran out of the zucchini muffins my little one brings to school, so it was time to make another batch!

I like muffins because they are portable, don't necessarily have to be refrigerated during the day, and they are easy for kids to eat. But, muffins can also be a calorie and sugar bomb if you're not careful. I've adapted this recipe over time and now feel confident giving them to my kids as a sweet treat that won't send them into that crazed and dazed look that they get when they have too much sugar. 

 Here's what Dr. Sears has to say about the affects of excess sugar on kids.

Here's the recipe and the nutritional low-down so you can make some of your own!

Pumpkin Spice Muffins

Who says you have to wait for fall?

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup bread flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 tsp pumpkin spice
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup orange juice
1 cup pumpkin
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup raisins

It's Easy:
1. Mix your dry ingredients and wet ingredients in separate bowls, and then combine them, stirring just enough to combine them. Do not over-stir or your muffins will be too tough.

2. Spoon into greased muffin tins about halfway full. I opt for smaller muffins. We can always have another one, but its hard to undo eating a big one!

3. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Enjoy!

This recipe should make 14 muffins, and each has 112 calories, 4 grams of fat, 3 grams of protein, and 5 grams of sugar, most of those coming from the raisins. Please note that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends 12 grams of sugar each day for children. One of these muffins represents almost half of a child's sugar needs for the day. Take a look at a typical muffin recipe, note the amount of sugar called for, and consider where that muffins may fall in your child's sugar needs for the day!

To reduce the sugar in these muffins, do not use as many raisins.

Read more about sugar allowance in Sugar Shake Up: How Much Do You Need?

These muffins are sweet and simple, and I love that my kids love them. They made my house super cozy today and when paired with low-sugar yogurt or low-fat cheese, will make a great snack later in the week.

And, they make my house smell great!

Get out there and get healthy today, even if you bake muffins!

The Birthday Watermelon

It's my birthday! I usually hate my birthday because of all the pressure to make it an amazing day to remember, when in reality it never measures up and just ends up being another day. But these days, I am so stinkin' happy with my life, truly carpeing the crap out of the diem every chance I get, that it kind of feels like every day is my birthday! That takes the pressure off and lets me relax a little!

Birthdays also used to mean a calorie coma, with all of the pressure to indulge in something sweet and sinful in the name of celebration. But you know I don't play that way. Its been over a year and a half since I gave up sugar, so birthday cake doesn't even tempt me anymore. But telling people that you're not going to have cake on your birthday results in a sonic thud of confusion and disapproval. 

I recently passed up cake at another birthday celebration, which prompted the question of how I would celebrate my birthday if I wasn't having cake. "With a party!" I replied. Silence. Apparently that was the wrong answer.

I'm already really hard to do nice things for, what with my compulsive martyrdom and chronic guilt complex whenever anyone tries to indulge me. So last year when my son asked if I really, truly wasn't going to have a cake for my birthday, he assured me that he and my husband could eat it all and I wouldn't have to eat any. Then he came up with a better idea: "I know! I'll make you a cake out of fruit!"

And that's how the birthday watermelon came to be. Sure there are plenty of adorable and impressive cakes made of fruit on Pinterest, but who has time for that? I popped a few candles into a quarter of a watermelon, listened to my favorite boys sing "Happy Birthday" (and debate mid-serenade on the proper placement of the cha-cha-chas), and made myself a secret wish. 

1. Buy a watermelon.
2. Put candles in watermelon.
3. Viola! You have yourself a birthday watermelon!

We ate together, I had a proper birthday treat, everyone felt appropriately ritualized, and I didn't have to eat cake.

It was the best idea ever, and I yesterday I bought my birthday watermelon for this year.

So what's the big deal about one measly piece of cake? Why don't I get over myself and live a little? Is one piece of cake really going to ruin my life? Am I so perfect that I'm not even going to eat cake on my birthday? No, it's actually the opposite. I can't handle cake on my birthday. I am not a one-piece-of-cake, one taste of ice cream, one square of chocolate a day kind of girl. I want a lot of it. I am a volume eater! Having just one piece is torture, and it might not ruin my life but it would screw up my weekend. I choose not to eat sugar because of how crummy it makes me feel. The sugar cravings that follow are just not worth it to me. Someday that might change but for now, my birthday watermelon was the sweetest treat I could ask for.

I didn't have a huge pile of chocolate for my birthday, which means I skipped the stomachache, the regret the next morning, and the "OMG why did I do that?" part of so many birthdays past. But, I still celebrated! I just celebrated my awesome life, not food. You can do it too. So get out there and get healthy, even if no one understands you!

And Happy Birthday. :)