Pumpkin Muffins

It's pumpkin season again and it smells divinely of cinnamon, vanilla and nutmeg in our kitchen. Today I made pumpkin muffins, pumpkin with milk rice, roasted pumpkin and pumpkin spice latte - all from the small butternut squash. The golden nugget will be carved for our Halloween lantern on Monday.

This is the second time I made the muffins and there'll be more of these soon, so the recipe is a keeper:

Ingredients for 12 muffins:

• 1 large egg
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup oil (I use olive oil or sunflower oil)
• 1 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 cup cranberries / raisins
• 1 tbsp rum / whiskey
• 1 cup grated raw pumpkin
• spices - vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg

Preparation: Soak the cranberries in the rum. Beat the egg with the sugar, add the oil, sift the flour with the baking powder and add it to the batter. Add the cranberries and the grated pumpkin, spice the batter and distribute it into the muffin cups. Bake the muffins at 180C in a preheated oven until ready.

The taste is rich of pumpkin - a bit like pumpkin pie, sweet and spicy. I forgot to add the cinnamon to the batter and sprinkled it on top, but it's better to put it in together with the other ingredients.