Tis the season for Pumpkin spice’d everything. If you love pumpkin spice and you love a good muffin, you must add this delicious recipe to your basket of tricks for cozy season treats.

These muffins were born by the reminisce of dinners leftover ingredients, and a pantry purge. I needed a half a can of coconut cream and a 1/4 cup of pumpkin, for butternut squash soup. Well once the soup was made, I thought “what can I do with leftover pumpkin and coconut cream?” MUFFINS, DUH! I’ve been perfecting the recipe since. It’s a good excuse to always have fresh muffins in the kitchen. 😉

With an added dose of protein, no processed sugars or butters you can feel good about indulging in this sweet treat. Whether you choose to make these muffins gluten free or not, I promise you they will not disappoint.

Add in’s:

Add in’s are where you can get creative. I recently made a batch with pecans and dried cranberries, amazing! Try out some different add in’s to create your favorite muffin.

mini dark chocolate chips
dried cranberries
chopped pecans
chopped walnuts
toasted coconut
almond slivers
raisens
candied nuts

Flour:

I actually only created this gluten free version because my mom was visiting, and left this flour behind. Now I’m hooked on King Arthurs Gluten Free flour. I love the consistency it gives with baking, and I love the way my body feels when I consume it.

For this recipe you can use gluten free, or regular baking flour. I have made these pumpkin spice muffins with both many times, and they always come out delicious.

Sugar:

I personally use coconut sugar when baking. It’s less processed than other sugars, and it actually contains minor traces of nutrients such as iron, zinc, calcium and potassium. Coconut sugar is easier for your body to process, thus creating less of a glucose spike when consumed.

While using coconut sugar doesn’t eliminate the sugars and carbohydrates from these muffins, it is a nice alternative to consider using when baking.

You can use whichever sugar you prefer. I have made this recipe with all brown sugar, because I was out of coconut sugar, and it was delicious. Something I love about these pumpkin spice muffins is the they are not overly sweet. If you are someone that prefers sweeter muffin, I might suggest adding in two tablespoons of brown sugar to the batter.

I have yet to make this recipe with a sugar alternative such as swerve, but I’m sure it would be great!

The overly ripe banana is not only part of the batter to add moisture, but to naturally sweeten it.

Oil:

While these Gluten free pumpkin spice muffins call for coconut oil, you can use grass fed or vegan butter as an alternative.

Same goes for the streusel topping. Instead of coconut oil, you could swap for butter.

Protein:

Why not add an extra serving of protein where we can? Sometimes when adding protein powder to a recipe will it dry it out. Not this one! With the combination of wet ingredients, you’ll never know a scoop of protein powder is hidden in there.

I would highly recommend sticking to vanilla protein powder for this recipe. Venture out of you wish, but the vanilla flavoring compliments the pumpkin perfectly.

If you choose not to add protein powder to your muffins, I would sub for 1/3 of flour.

Milk:

My first take at these, I used coconut cream because it was left over from dinner. It added this creamy, moist texture with the tiniest hint of coconut. However, I have not had any coconut cream on hand since my first bake.

Almond milk has been my go to for the last few batches. You could use whole milk, any kind of nut milk, and of course coconut cream if you have it! Just make sure to add a half cup of liquid when making subs on the milk.