‘Tis the season to pick delicious things up off the ground.

So far this fall I’ve picked up about 35 pounds of pecans (pre-shelled weight unfortunately), and enough persimmons to make 10 cups of persimmon puree.

Today I looked at them and decided they looked like muffins.

I adapted a few of the persimmon recipes I found into one, if I say so myself, moist and spicy baked good.

It was one of those things you take one bite of and immediately regret not having doubled the recipe, or alternately, not having baked them when no one else was home.

Here are the ingredients in front of the gorgeous mill I’m so in love with.

All but the dried cranberries and the coconut oil, which got squeezed out of the picture. If you don’t have persimmons, you can use pumpkin or other winter squash puree. If you do substitute, you might need to add some honey to compensate for the lack of sweetness compared to persimmons.

Persimmon-Pecan-Cranberry Muffins

makes 12 big muffins

2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour, preferably fresh-milled

1/3 cup sugar, I used organic cane sugar

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

1 Tablespoon pumpkin pie spice, or the equivalent

1 cup yogurt

1 cup persimmon puree

1/4 cup coconut oil, melted

1 T. grated fresh ginger

2 tsp. vanilla extract

2 eggs

3/4 cup dried cranberries

1 cup pecans, toasted and broken or chopped coarsely

Combine flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, and pumpkin pie spice. (If you don’t have pumpkin pie spice, you can make your own or just wing it with some cinnamon, etc., you know, the usual suspects).

In a separate bowl, combine your wet ingredients; the yogurt, persimmon puree, eggs, grated ginger and vanilla. Then add the coconut oil– if your mixture of yogurt/puree/eggs is much colder than room temperature at this point, let it set out for a few minutes to warm up, or briefly warm it before adding in the coconut oil to keep the oil from seizing up into lumps. If you don’t want to bother with all that, you can substitute another oil like olive that doesn’t lump up when it gets a little chilly.

Combine the wet and the dry. I prefer to add the dry to the wet because I don’t end up with two sticky bowls to wash, but that’s just my preference. Cook’s Illustrated seems to agree with me.

I also dump in my pecans and cranberries at about the same time. If I wait to put them in later, once the wet and dry are completely combined, it means too much stirring for my liking. Overblending starts to develop the gluten and makes the dough chewy rather than tender.

Divide the batter into twelve oiled regular muffin tins, heaping it up a bit. It cooks just fine this way, and you get big, hearty muffins.

Bake at 350 degrees F. until when you press on one in the middle it springs back. I’m thinking it was between 14-18 minutes, but do your own due diligence and keep checking on them. I also sometimes peel back a flake of the top and see what’s going on inside. If I see wet doughy-ness, I smush it back on and let it go a few more minutes.

Enjoy hot, slathered with butter.