Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cake

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pumpkin_chocolate_chip_cake_2

Yum

It could be that I’ve been going a little overboard on the pumpkin recipes recently. I can’t help it. Between the pumpkins we got at the pumpkin patch this year, the awesome home grown pumpkins my friend shared with me, and my newly found easy method for cooking a whole pumpkin – I’ve had lots of pumpkin puree to play with. Yes, my house smells like the holidays. No one seems to mind.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cake (adapted from Diva Entertains Blog)

2/3 cup butter or coconut oil, melted
1 1/2 cups sucanat or brown sugar
4 eggs
2 cups pumpkin puree
2 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2/3 cup milk or water
1 cup chocolate chips (I use either homemade chips or these these soy free chocolate chips)

Cream together butter and sucanat. Beat in eggs and pumpkin puree. Add flour, baking powder, salt, spices, vanilla and milk – beating until well combined. Fold in chocolate chips. Pour batter into a well buttered 9×13″ baking pan. Bake in a 350° oven for 25-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.

Serve as it is…

Or top with whipped cream…

What’s your preference? With cream or without? I’ll take three dollops, myself.

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Whole Wheat Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

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Whole Wheat Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins anyone? Grab a cup of coffee or hot chocolate! What a delicious combination, and perfect for fall!

Yum

As several of you requested, I’m sharing my healthy variations to Crystal’s Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins. These were a big hit yesterday morning when I served them in our marriage class.

If you’d like to read more about how I adapt a recipe to make it healthier, check out this post. You’ll find a free, downloadable recipe conversion sheet which you can tack onto your refrigerator to reference when you need to convert a recipe.

Whole Wheat Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

(adapted from MoneySavingMom)

5.0 from 1 reviews
Whole Wheat Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins
 
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Author:
Serves: =24
Ingredients
  • 3 cups whole wheat flour (I used freshly ground hard white wheat)
  • ½ cup sucanat
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon sea salt
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 4 eggs
  • 2 cups pureed pumpkin (or one 16 ounce can)
  • 1 cup melted coconut oil (or butter)
  • 1 cup chocolate chips
Instructions
  1. In a large mixing bowl, stir together all dry ingredients.
  2. Add eggs, pumpkin and oil.
  3. Mix well.
  4. Fold in chocolate chips.
  5. Spoon batter into 24 paper lined muffin cups.
  6. Bake in a 400° oven for 16-22 minutes or until the muffins are golden brown.

 

(I prefer either homemade chocolate chips or soy free chocolate chips)

 


These are easy to put together and make your house smell just like the fall season is supposed to smell. Pumpkin and cinnamon smell awesome. Plus, adding chocolate to a muffin never, ever hurts my feelings. :)

Want more pumpkin recipes?

  1. Overnight Pumpkin Spice French Toast Casserole (Such a wonderful recipe to put together at night, then bake and serve to guests in the morning!)
  2. Super Moist Sour Cream Pumpkin Bread
  3. Pumpkin Spice Roll-Out Cookies (Simple and sweet, one of my favorites!)
  4. Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread
  5. Pumpkin Donuts (I make these all year round as an excuse to feed my kids a vegetable for breakfast.)
  6. Warm Pumpkin Custard (Oh yes, you should drink your pumpkin.)
  7. Simple Pumpkin Pancakes
  8. Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cake
  9. Pumpkin Pecan Pie Squares (Such a fun combination of two holiday favorites.)
  10. Pumpkin Pie
  11. Pumpkin Breakfast Cake
  12. Pumpkin Cheesecake (Making life better, one delicious bite at a time.)
  13. Pumpkin Pie Bars (These are a Thanksgiving tradition at our house.)
  14. Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins
  15. Easy Pumpkin Cheesecake Muffins (With chocolate chips on top. Amen.)
  16. Flourless Pumpkin Muffins (Flourless and fabulous!)
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Homemade Chocolate Chips

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After talking about the Enjoy Life Dairy, Soy, and Gluten Free Chocolate Chips on sale at Amazon the other day…I decided to make a batch of my own Homemade SF, DF, GF Chocolate Chips to have on hand while I wait for the others to come in the mail.

Homemade Chocolate Chips

I made these chips with coconut oil this time. (You can use butter instead, but coconut oil is a great option if you can’t have dairy. Read more about coconut oil here.)

Can I just say…these chunks of chocolate taste incredible sprinkled into a bowl full of peanuts. Or all by themselves if you need a quick chocolate fix. Or mixed into these easy and healthier Fudge Brownies. Or in these Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffins. Or with a glass of milk. 

Or on a Friday afternoon at 2:47 just because.

These homemade chocolate chips make yummy Chocolate Chip Cookies too…but they don’t hold together when baked as well as commercial chocolate chips. They’re just too “pure” I guess, and tend to melt into the cookie. This isn’t a problem with taste…but can be a problem with appearance. 

Just send the ugly cookies to my house. They’ll get eaten. :)

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Snowman Pancakes

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We haven’t yet had a big, hard snow fall in Nebraska. I’m sure it’s coming sometime. The boys are really looking forward to some Snow Ice Cream. It is SO worth the uncontrollable shivering and blue lips to eat Snow Ice Cream.

While we eagerly (sort of) await some snow…we’re having fun making some (warm) snow related food.

See, check out our cute Snowmen Pancakes:

I just used my regular Simple Whole Wheat Pancake recipe with mini chocolate chips. Sometimes our snowmen receive randomly placed buttons and eyeballs when we accidentally drop a chocolate chip in the wrong spot. You’ve gotta love a snowman with freckles.

We also had a lot of fun last week making Snowflake Quesadillas:

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And…I thought I’d share this idea sent to me last year. One reader, Jenny, used my whole wheat soft pretzel recipe to make Pretzel Snowmen. Too cute to eat…almost.

pretzelsnowman

I wonder when my kids will outgrow “cute food”. Eh, as long as it’s FOOD, they’ll keep humoring me, right?

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Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffins

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I’m not sure if you are a chocolate lover like I am, but any recipe that has the words chocolate and chocolate written side by side makes me very happy and excited.

Chocolate_Chocolate_Chip_Muffins

My biggest hint on this recipe is to use sour cream instead of milk. (The recipe lists either one.) Sour cream makes these super moist.

This recipe is a definite family favorite. They taste amazing with a glass of milk or a cup of coffee!

Chocolate Chocolate Chip MuffinsYum

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/3 cup sucanat
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup melted coconut oil or butter
2/3 cup milk or sour cream
1 egg
1/4 cup chocolate chips (I recommend these organic chips without soy lecithin)

Stir together dry ingredients. Mix in coconut oil, milk and egg. Fold in chocolate chips. Scoop into 9-12 paper lined muffin tins. Bake at 400° for 20  minutes. Makes about 9 muffins. (I double the recipe for my family of six.)

5.0 from 1 reviews
Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffins
 
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Prep time
Cook time
Total time
 
Author:
Serves: 9 muffins
Ingredients
  • 1½ cups whole wheat flour
  • ⅓ cup sucanat
  • ¼ cup cocoa powder
  • ½ teaspoon sea salt
  • ½ teaspoon baking powder
  • ¼ cup melted coconut oil or butter
  • ⅔ cup milk or sour cream
  • 1 egg
  • ¼ cup chocolate chips
Instructions
  1. Stir together dry ingredients.
  2. Mix in coconut oil, milk and egg.
  3. Fold in chocolate chips.
  4. Scoop into 9-12 paper lined muffin tins.
  5. Bake at 400° for 20 minutes.

If you have some good quality coconut oil, I highly recommend using it in this recipe. The coconut flavor with the chocolate is SO GOOD.

How about Chocolate Chip Bread?

Don’t mind if I do. Indeed, you can also make this recipe into a quick bread instead of muffins. Just spread the batter into a buttered loaf pan and bake at 350° for 50 minutes! Get all the details here.

chocolate_pumpkin_bread_2

 

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Making Homemade Chocolate Chips…In Detail

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I posted about making homemade chocolate chips a long time ago. Since that time, I’ve received several emails asking for more help and detail about how this works. It seems that many of you who tried the recipe are having trouble getting everything to melt and dissolve and mix like it should.

In light of your chocolate chip frustration…I decided to do a more thorough tutorial about how I make chocolate chips. The words Chocolate and frustration should never be in the same sentence together. Ever.

You can use coconut oil or butter to make your chips. I used butter this time because I’m almost out of coconut oil. Butter doesn’t quite work as well as coconut oil. They tend to be softer with butter…but still oh so good. Especially when you put them in these Chocolate Chip Brownies.

Here again is the recipe:

Homemade Chocolate ChipsYum

1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup rapadura or sucanat (you can use white sugar if you want)
1 cup coconut oil or butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract  (homemade vanilla extract if you have it!)

Begin by placing the cocoa, sucanat and butter (or coconut oil) into a quart sized jar. 

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Fill a small saucepan with two or three inches of water. Place the jar into the saucepan/water. Turn the heat on medium/high to begin melting the butter.

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Stir often. After five minutes, my mixture looked like this:

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After ten minutes, my mixture looked like this:

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It took a total of thirteen minutes for the butter to completely melt. I then pulled it out of the water, added the vanilla and stirred well.

The mixture in my jar looked and smelled SO GOOD that I wanted to drink it. But I didn’t.  That would have made quite a mustache. 

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Pour the mixture into a 9×13 inch pan covered with parchment paper. Spread it as evenly as you can. 

As you can hopefully tell from the following picture, I still have a little sucanat that refused to completely dissove. Can you see the bits of chunkyness? That’s been one of the questions I’ve received from several of you. But…the little bits of chunkyness don’t hurt anything. My chocolate chips tasted just fine!

You like how the ceiling fan is reflecting in the chocolate? 
I’m just trying to show off my terrible photography skills.

Place your pan into the refrigerator for 1-2 hours so that the chocolate can harden. Remove it from the parchment paper and break it into chunks. Store in refrigerator in an airtight container (unless you and your family eat them all first).

Just a note:  These chocolate chips taste wonderful in Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookies, but keep in mind that they are very pure and therefore tend to melt and get runny while baking. Chocolate Chip Cookies with homemade chocolate chips taste wonderful, but might look a little bit funny. No matter, ugly cookies taste good too. :)  I recommend eating these chocolate chips plain, mixed with peanuts or in trail mix, in Chocolate Chip Brownies or in Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffins.

And now, I do believe I need to use my freshly made chocolate chips to bake brownies. After I eat some green beans and broccoli of course…

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Healthy Treat for Today: Trail Mix With HOMEMADE CHOCOLATE CHIPS

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Who knew? 

You can make your very own chocolate chips!!

Okay, well, I’m actually not clever enough to make them into the shape of chocolate chips…so maybe we’d better call them chocolate chunks.

Chip…Chunk…whatever. How cool are WE to know how to make our very own Chocolate Chiunpks?

I’ve had this recipe for a while, but hadn’t really thought about making it. Then I saw it on another post and was reminded! I’m SO glad for the reminder!

The recipe comes from my FAVORITE nutrition book:  Nourishing Traditions. 

I adapted it just a bit because it had a pretty bitter chocolate taste…and you may need to adapt it more, depending on how bitter you like your chocolate. 

Also, depending on the quality of coconut oil you use, you may or may not have a
coconut-y taste in your chips. I LIKE it with the coconut taste. 

Okay…so are you ready?!?! 

Homemade Chocolate ChipsYum

1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup rapadura or sucanat
1 cup coconut oil
1 T. vanilla

Mix ingredients in a glass container and set in simmering water until melted. Mix together well. 
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(Anybody wanna know what I was doing at exactly 2:04 yesterday?)
(uh, see…you can see my clock there, behind the melting chocolate chip mixture.)

Spread mixture on a piece of buttered parchment paper and allow to cool in the refrigerater. 
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When hardened, remove parchment paper and break into chunks. Store in refrigerator in an airtight container.
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Aren’t they beautiful? Mmmmm-mmmm. (See a more thorough chocolate chip making tutorial here!)

Now…for the Trail Mix part…

1/2 cup pecans
1/2 cup cashews
1/2 cup peanuts
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup dried apricots, cut into pieces
1/3 cup homemade chocolate chips

Mix it all together and store in an airtight container in the refrigerator…if it makes it that far!

Come back tomorrow for a recipe for whole wheat, rapadura Chocolate Chiumpk Cookies!

(And let me know if you can figure out how to pronounce that.)  :)

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