Emergency Pumpkin Muffins

It's happened to all of us -- you're headed to a "Tastes of Fall" brunch party, and you remember 30 minutes out that it's a potluck. You COULD be lame and simply purchase a six pack of pumpkin beer or the like, but somehow you've acquired a reputation for being a decent cook. It might have something to do with your food blog.

So, in less than 25 minutes start to finish, you whip up Emergency Pumpkin Muffins!

These are not health-food pumpkin bran muffins with whole wheat flour and oats; instead, these are slap-dash, fast-and-dirty pumpkin-chocolate chip muffins -- nothing healthy about 'em. (Recipe below!)

So -- there I was, half an hour to go, and I still hadn't showered after my ride. Moving quickly, I set the oven to 400 degrees and whipped together 3/4 c. white sugar, 2 large eggs, and 1/4 c. vegetable oil. Then came 3/4 c. pumpkin, a splash of water, 1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour, 1/2 t. baking soda, 3/4 t. baking powder, 1/4 t. ground cloves, 1/4 t. ground nutmeg, 1/2 t. cinnamon, 1/2 t. salt, and big heapin' handful of semi-sweet chocolate chips. With so little time, I eyeballed all the measurements and managed to cover myself in pumpkin puree, but after about seven minutes I was ready to spoon the batter into my mini muffin tins and set everything to bake for ten minutes.

I used those ten minutes to hurl myself through a shower and into a semblance of readiness (and to snap a few quick photos of the muffins), and by the time I'd pulled on clothes, I had something very much like these to greet me:

I took my final shots, did a basic kitchen clean up and VOILA! Thirty-three mini pumpkin-chocolate chip muffins in less than 25 minutes.

BAM. Muffins in a hurry.

Also, now I get why so many food bloggers just do baked goods. It's so much easier to photograph something like a muffin (and make it look tempting) than, say, stew (which always just looks...gloopy).