I will confess that for much of the year I forget about the Pumpkin Muffins we make at the Bakehouse. And then, every October, I see them in the Bakeshop, I have a bite, and then another, and then I’m reminded how ridiculously good they are. In a very accessible, easily carried format, you can have a delightfully delicious, really rich, and slightly spicy (from the bits of candied ginger that are woven throughout the batter and warming from the fall spices) muffin.
Pumpkin Muffins are not, as I’d have originally imagined, some late 20th-century coffee shop invention. Food writer Nancie McDermott (who I met many years ago at the Southern Foodways Alliance Symposium) shares a recipe she stumbled on for pumpkin muffins from the Old Salem Tavern in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, dated 1784. The first written records of making them seem to be from 1766, from the Moravian bakery in Salem, North Carolina. Moravians, of course, are a subset of Protestant religious practice, and followers of Jan Hus, the late-14th/early-15th century Czech priest whose preaching in Prague foreshadowed the Protestant Reformation. (Jan Hus openly and actively criticized the church and the papacy for corruption. After years of verbal conflict, Hus was burned at the stake on the 6th of July, 1415. After his death, protests and riots broke out in Prague and around the region. The Moravians of North Carolina were Hussites who fled first to England and then, in the 18th century, to the Americas in order to be able to freely practice their religion.)
At the Bakehouse, the Pumpkin Muffins are made with plenty of pumpkin, organic wheat flour, demerara sugar, and some of that crystallized ginger I mentioned along with cloves from India, cinnamon from Indonesia, and nutmeg from Jamaica. They’re great in the morning with some Tree Town coffee or a cup of your favorite tea. You can also enjoy them, though, for dessert or a snack. And at the Old Salem Tavern, they were served as the “bread course” with dinner, so put some out to accompany your next main meal! Don’t forget! Pick up a couple of these compelling muffins this month while you can!
