Pumpkin Muffins with Brown Butter Glaze

Happy Wednesday, everyone! Sorry about the lack of Snacktastic Sunday post last week, but I was too worn out from our cabin adventures to cook anything for the Patriots game. We ordered Chinese takeout instead, and it was delicious.

You know what else is delicious? These muffins! So far this fall I’ve been reveling in my love for apples, but it’s time to give pumpkins some lovin’ too. Especially when the pumpkins are put into moist, spice-y muffins drizzled with a ridiculously delicious and addictive brown butter glaze.

BUT FIRST, cabin recap and photos…because you guys definitely care what I do on the weekends and love super long posts, right?

So as you can see from the stream of pictures above, Dan and I spent the weekend at a cabin in the woods with two other couples. A very late-20s/early-30s yuppie thing to do (so I’ve been told), but that’s our demographic and we embrace it! Cabin weekends are great, especially in the fall.

Friday – Everyone got in late-ish, so there wasn’t a lot of time to do a lot of stuff. Instead, we sat by the fire, ate sausages, watched Jurassic Park (so good every time), and made/drank cocktails. We also drank lots of boozy hot apple cider using the sweet mugs I got us for our (hopefully) first annual couples’ cabin outing – I wanted to call them friendship mugs, but Dan said that was too much, so they’re just “cabin mugs”. Between the sausages, cider and cocktails, I slept really well that night.

Saturday – We all slept in (sort of…9am isn’t that late), then devoured an enormous breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, bagels + cream cheese, potatoes, and pumpkin muffins. Unsurprisingly, nobody felt like doing anything productive after that (it didn’t help that it was raining). So we all stayed in our PJs and spent a few hours drinking cider and playing board games. Once the rain let up, our friend Kat suddenly got all motivated and decided to go canoeing b/c it would be a shame to spend a weekend in a cabin next to the river and not go out into the water.

This shamed me into putting on real clothes, but not enough to get in the boat with her. I was more than happy to stay on land and take pictures of our husbands ruggedly carrying the canoe down to the river. Kat and Andy lasted about 20 minutes on the water, then came back inside for more cider and board games. The rest of the day was a blur of eating, drinking, football watching and hot tubbing.

It was all very relaxing and peaceful. The only excitement came Saturday night, when it started storming hard. We had forgotten to latch the outer door to the cabin before going to bed, and a particularly strong gust of wind slammed it open at some point in the night. This caused me to bolt awake in a panic, thinking there was an axe-wielding madman in the house. I spent a few agonizing minutes trying to remember if anyone had locked the main door to the cabin, and listening hard for any suspicious, murder-y sounds coming from the living room.

Good news: no one died. But, the outer door continued to bang open in the wind and make loud scary noises so I spent the rest of the night in a very tense, fitful doze, expecting to be axed to death in my sleep at any moment. It was not restful.

Sunday – Our last few hours in the cabin were spent cleaning, packing, and eating. Even with the enormous lunch we all ate (especially Kat’s husband Andy, who impressively ate a sandwich, a burger, AND a hot dog), there was way too much food leftover. Note to self: next time, don’t pack like we’re going on a 6 month trekking expedition.

Note to self, part 2: check all the rooms more thoroughly before we leave, so Dan doesn’t leave his favorite winter coat behind. Poor Dan…hope it’s not a cold fall/winter…guess he’ll have to make do with the super metrosexual, Euro-style peacoat my mom bought him a few years back 😉

So that was my weekend. If you’ve made it through all that, I <3  you. And, I will reward your patience with delicious pumpkin muffins. This recipe was given to me by one of my bridesmaids as part of my bridal shower/bachelorette party. It’s actually recipe for loaf cake, but when I made this the first time the middle puffed up beautiful on the outside but was totally raw on the inside (possibly b/c the batter is supposed to make 3 loaf cakes but I poured it all into one pan). Food blogger fail, big time.

Normally I would throw a tantrum and pretend the disaster/recipe never happened, but the parts of the cake that did bake all the way through were so delicious that I decided to try again. As muffins this time, to ensure that everything had a better chance of cooking evenly. Problem solving skillz – I’ve got them!

The muffins baked beautifully! Full, springy tops and no raw batter in the middle. Moist, tender crumb, and delicate pumpkin flavor perfectly complemented by cinnamon and spices.  And that glaze! Unbelievable. Amazing nutty toffee-ness from the browned butter, not too sweet, and totally addictive – it was so good that I found myself licking up the puddles of glaze that dripped onto the table so that not a single drop was wasted. If you like pumpkin flavored treats, these are the perfect muffins for you!