Best Pumpkin Muffins Ever! (recipe included)

We love pumpkin around here.  We make pumpkin cookies, pumpkin waffles, pumpkin bread, and the ever easy pumpkin muffins.  I usually have a good plan of freezing some of the muffins for a day when we are too busy to bake a batch, but I rarely am able to get any of them into the freezer as they usually get eaten too quickly (my 3 y/o can eat 4 muffins in one sitting if I allow it).

My favorite way to make pumpkin muffins is with real pumpkin from the garden that I have frozen in 2 cup batches from summer, I have run out at this point and used canned pumpkin for this most recent batch...but the best are when I can go from picture 1 to picture 2 here.

So, for the recipe...

2  2/3 cups sugar
2/3 cup shortening (we usually use coconut oil)
2/3 cup water
16 oz pumpkin (1 can or 2 cups of frozen pumpkin meat)
4 eggs
3  1/3 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1  1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cloves (or 1 drop clove essential oil)
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp baking powder

Pre-heat oven to 350.  Mix sugar and shortening and slowly add pumpkin, eggs and water.  Mix in dry ingredients.  Bake in muffin tins with liners for 22-26 minutes. This usually makes around 3 dozen muffins or you can change it up with making part muffins and part pumpkin bread, just keep in mind that the loaves will bake for around 50-55 minutes vs. the time for the muffins.

We really like them with real butter or cream cheese...enjoy!