Baking Therapy - Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Walnut Muffins

I've been spending the week gearing up for a trial in San Antonio, so my blog has been languishing over here, all lonely-like. It's now 2 a.m. and I'm hitting the road in the morning with the trial team...but I can't resist throwing up a quick post about the pumpkin chocolate chip muffins I made tonight as a work break, inspired by my friend Alice, who made some last week and set off this craving.

I started out with this recipe, but as usual, I made quite a few modifications based on the comments (I really, really love the comment feature on AllRecipes - having that community voice of experience is invaluable).

Here's the recipe as I made it. I like the way the muffins turned out - not very sweet at all, and the whole wheat flour and walnuts give them a groundedness that makes me feel like I could eat these for breakfast without sending my blood sugar out of whack. They taste healthy enough to give you that smug, "I'm eating something good for me" feeling, but are still delicious enough that you want to eat them - a very difficult balance to achieve, in my experience. As you can see from the photo, I made these using cupcake wraps, but I'd strongly recommend greasing the muffin tins and not using wraps; for some reason, they stuck to the paper like crazy. (EDIT: OK, it turns out that I was just eating them while they were too hot. They came off the paper like a charm the next day!)

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Walnut Muffins

INGREDIENTS
* 1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1-1/2 cups whole wheat flour
* 1 cup sugar (original recipe called for 2 cups; if you like sweeter muffins, go to town)
* 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
* 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
* 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
* 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 4 eggs
* 1 (15 ounce) can solid pack pumpkin
* 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
* 1/4 cup vegetable oil
* 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
* 1 cup walnuts

DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
2. In a mixing bowl, combine the first eight ingredients (all the dry ingredients).
3. In another bowl, combine egg, pumpkin, applesauce and oil; stir into dry ingredients just until moistened.
4. Stir in chocolate chips and walnuts.
5. Fill greased muffin tins or cupcake wraps two-thirds full with batter. Bake at 400 degrees F for 18 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Makes about two dozen muffins.