These deliciously moist gluten-free Pumpkin Pie Muffins are my younger son’s favorite. When he was little, he ate so much pumpkin and winter squash that he turned a slightly orange hue from all of the beta-carotene. Luckily, his skin tone returned to normal!
Low-Carb Pumpkin Pie Muffins
I love cooking with pumpkin because it’s low-carb and full of healthy nutrients. Given that this recipe also uses almond flour, which is far lower in carbohydrates than wheat flour, this is a fantastic low-carb muffin recipe. If you’re following a low-carb, high-fat (LCHF) diet, you’ll want to take a look at my Keto Diet Recipes page. All of those recipes are sugar-free.
Pumpkin Pie Muffins
Ingredients
- 2 cups blanched almond flour (not almond meal)
- ¼ teaspoon celtic sea salt
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- 1½ teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
- ½ cup honey
- 3 large eggs
- 1 cup roasted pumpkin, well packed
Instructions
- In a large bowl combine almond flour, salt, baking soda, and pumpkin pie spice
- In a vitamix puree honey, eggs, and pumpkin until smooth
- Stir wet ingredients into dry
- Place paper liners in muffin pan
- Divide batter between paper liners
- Bake at 350°F for 30-35 minutes
- Cool for 1 hour
- Serve
Equipment
Gluen-Free Child-Friendly Muffins
These muffins are easy to make and will fill your kitchen with the wonderful smell of autumn. They are very moist on the inside. Beware of little children who gobble them up, leaving the wrappers strewn around your house! Not such a bad problem to have considering how nourishing these treats are.
Low-Carb Pumpkin Recipes
Here are some low-carb pumpkin recipes for you!
elana says
Kitchen Goddess -Thanks so much for commenting! Great to hear from you again. I haven’t cooked with rice flour for more than a decade, so I’m probably not the best one to ask about this substitution. You could try it out and let us know your results, or you may like to post this question in the forums and someone over there might be better able to answer it. Again, thanks for all of your comments and for letting us know about your substitutions. Your icing sounds delicious!
Shirley -Thanks for leaving your tips and the amazing pumpkin bar recipe; I can’t wait to try that one. I am completely in pumpkin mode this week :-)
Karis -Thanks for letting us in all of your recipe renovations. And thanks for your kind words.
Kitchen Goddess says
I did make it with 1/2 rice flour to 1/2 ground almonds – looks and smells wonderful. I topped it with a maple & lemon icing too. Don’t know how it tastes yet as I’m taking it with me to work later, I’ll blog about it soon enough though.
Kitchen Goddess says
Instead of making muffins I’ve turned this into a loaf cake, it’s in the oven now and the kitchen smells gorgeous. Thanks Elana :)
Karis says
These pumpkin muffins are amazingly delicious–it’s so nice to take one (or three!) to my 7:30am classes without starting myself on a sugar crash for the day. Thank you!
I love your recipes; I’ve been meaning to post for a while. I wanted to pass on that, with great results, I consistently do the following:
-sub in melted butter and/or coconut oil for the grapeseed soil. In the chocolate chip cookies, the coconut oil lends great flavor!
-use Trader Joe’s (unblanched) almond meal. I always have to increase the amount “almond flour” called for, but as long as I add flour until the batter resembles what it should (cookie dough, muffin batter, etc), the results have been perfect.
I also frequently halve your recipes, or add in yummies like shredded coconut, all to excellent ends. I do believe that these things–the option to half, sub, alter, add and still get an exceptional product–are the hallmarks of great recipes!
Thanks again, your chocolate chip cookies, banana bread and now this one are all part of my regular baking routine.
Shirley says
Since everyone is posting recipes (I love that!), I just thought I’d add info on the baked goods I mentioned.
First, for the crustless pumpkin pie, use your favorite recipe for pumpkin pie and add 1/4 cup GF flour. I use a mix of rice flour and cornstarch, but for those who only use almond flour, I think it would work. (Note: One of the reasons I am here is that I want to eat healthier and use more almond flour, agave, etc.) I used this trick to make other pies crustless, too, like coconut and chocolate. NOBODY misses the crust. The pies are really wonderful.
The pumpkin bar recipe I use is from celiac.com and uses sugar and GF flour (rice flour and cornstarch for us), but I believe non-sugar sweetener could be used and almond flour. I am sure you could figure it out, Elana! These bars are thin and tasty. They really need no topping although the original recipe called for frosting.
Pumpkin Bars
Gluten-Free Bar Ingredients:
¾ cup sugar
1 egg
½ cup pumpkin
½ cup oil
1/6 cup water
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup GF flour*
¼ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon each: ground cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon
Gluten-Free Bar Directions:
Beat egg. Add other wet ingredients and mix well. Add dry ingredients. Bake in a greased glass 9” x 13” pan about 30 minutes until toothpick comes out clean. Bars will be lightly browned. They are very thin and moist. Let cool.
*I make up flour ahead of time using 3 parts Asian white rice flour and 2 parts Argo cornstarch. Measure out flour as needed for recipe. No xanthan gum is necessary.
Note: When I use fresh baked pumpkin and it’s watery, I just use 2/3 cup of pumpkin and NO water. Works great!
Kitchen Goddess says
Hi Elana I’m sorry for not commenting here as much as I should although I have kept reading – promise :)
Just wondering if I could use half rice flour and half ground almonds instead? The muffins sound so fabulous.
elana says
~M -Those gingerbread pancakes sound amazing!
Jessica -Thanks, they make 8 and I’ve added the yield to the above recipe.
Hannah -If you make them with chips, please stop by and let us know how they were.
Ruth -I try to avoid canned food as it contains Bisphenol-A, an endocrine disrupting substance that has been linked to cancer. I will do a post for you in the next week or two on how to roast winter squash (including pumpkins).
Kimberly -I don’t think these would work with canned pumpkin; if you do experiment with it, please let us know how it turns out.
Shirley -Thanks for your comment; your pies sound delicious and I’m very curious about your pumpkin bar recipe. Maybe if you have a chance you could leave it for us.
andrew -You are very welcome :-)
chana -Oh my goodness, this recipe looks amazing, can’t wait to make it for Thanksgiving. Thanks so much for sharing it with us all.
Alchemille -Thanks so much for your comment. I’m not sure how they will turn out with canned pumpkin puree, it is somewhat wetter than the roasted pumpkin. If you make the muffins with the puree I hope you will let us know if they turned out ok. Yes, I am in the process “finalizing” a cookbook for Ten Speed Press, it is a very fun project!
Kelly -Thanks so much for sharing your butternut pudding recipe; it sounds so delicious!
Heather -Thanks for leaving us the link to your lovely pumpkin spice cake. Your other treat sounds amazing as well.
Robyn -I don’t have a vegan cream cheese filling. I do have recipes for regular cream cheese frosting and a vegan coconut frosting. I think the coconut frosting might be good on these muffins.
Sandra -I made these several times before posting them here and they were moist though held together very well. They are just a tad more moist than a regular muffin. A few factors might have come into play with the batch you made:
Thanks for your frank and honest comment, I really appreciate it as I want to give you (and everyone else) great recipes that work.
Also, did you bake up this recipe using coconut flour? If so, just wondering how did they taste? I was quite tempted to do the same myself. Thanks again for stopping by :-)
Paula says
Mine were a little soft in the middle. I actually thought they fell.(they were sunken in the middle) I used an egg replacer and canned pumpkin. I think I need to use real eggs. My daughter used canned pumpkin and they turned out perfect but she used real eggs.
Christina says
you said Bob’s Red Mill does not work in your recipes, sadly I just bought some and was excited to try these pumpkin muffins tonight. So glad I read your comment while I was roasting my pumpkin, but hadn’t yet started the batter. Can you recommend some brands that work with your recipes, as there are a lot that look amazing that I want to try. Would Bobs work for anything on your site or mainly just this recipe?
Sandra says
I am enjoying Elana’s Pantry and many of the recipes, however the Pumpkin Muffins are over moist to the point of being soggy despite careful attention to cooking temp and time. In my opinion there is simply too much wet ingredients and nowhere for them to be absorbed as almond flour is not very absorbent. This recipe works much better with coconut flour.
sandrita mason says
I agree with the comment about too much of the ‘wet’ ingredients in some gluten-free muffin recipes. I’ve been trying the muffin recipes from a new book, BABYCAKES, and the amount of oil listed (1/4 cup) produced something that looked like soup rather than batter. I baked a couple of batches of pumpkin and corn muffins anyway. The muffins are tasty enough but mighty oily and gummy.
Kathy says
I was so anxious to try the Pumpkin Pie Muffins recipe since I am new to gluten-free baking and this was the first time I tried a recipe with the almond flour the recipe calls for. I followed this recipe closely and did not question the baking time the recipe shows of 40-45 min. at 350 degrees. The recipe filled a small 12-muffin pan.
I set the timer for 40 min. and visually checked the muffins at 25 min. and saw they were burned almost black. My oven has a thermometer in it and it showed the oven temperature to be at 350 degrees as the recipe called for. And, at a 25 min. baking time, even regular pumpkin muffins would not have been so burned (on the middle rack of the oven). I know that about regular muffins, because I have made them frequently. As the muffins cooled they shrunk to almost hockey puck size. They were moist on the inside, but very dark (burned) on the outside.
Is the oven temperature of 350 degrees correct? And, should the baking time shown on this website be corrected to 20 min.?
Robyn Baldwin says
Hi Elana,
These look fabulous – pumpkin is one of my son’s favorite flavors. By chance do you have a vegan cream cheese filling recipe? Our local coffee house has a pumpkin muffin with cream cheese filling. This would make a perfect gluten free version.
Robyn
Heather says
I love pumpkin, especially fresh pumpkin.
I recently made a Pumpkin Spice Cake. You can find the recipe here:
http://www.lifeglutenfree.com/mama_baby_gluten_free/2008/09/pumpkin-spice-bread.html
Also, the other day I baked an organic pumpkin that I bought from my local farmers market. I scraped some out into a bowl and added coconut oil, honey and spices and stirred them together. It was a nice treat!