Pumpkin Protein Muffins

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a weird obsession with pumpkin.  I just can't get enough of the stuff!  I, for one, hate the fact that pumpkin is only deemed "appropriate" during the months of October and November.  I keep it handy at all times, because you never know when a craving might hit!

Needless to say I was ecstatic when my mom asked us to dinner on Sunday and informed me we were having turkey dinner.  What better reason to pull out the pumpkin than to make a tasty dessert?  My parents and my brother have also been trying to get healthier, so I took it as a challenge to find a use for pumpkin to create a somewhat healthy dessert. 

Thanks to Pinterest, I had a wealth of information to work with.  I finally found a few muffin recipes that seemed to fit the bill, and decided to work from there.  What I came up with was tastey, low calorie, low sugar, high protein muffin.  Unfortunately, I'm not sure these will make it until dinner tomorrow, I've already had two! 

I figured I couldn't be the only one this excited, and decided to share.

Ingredients
1 15oz can of pumpkin
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
4 egg whites
6 tablespoons protein powder (mine was vanilla flavored)
1 1/2 cups oats
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
3 tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons pumpkin pie spice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
8 packets of Stevia (equivalent to 1/4 cup regular sugar)

Directions
Preheat oven to 350.  Lightly spray muffin tin with cooking spray or use liners (I normally spray my liners as well.)
Mix all the wet ingredients.  Slowly add each of the dry ingredients individually.
Scoop into muffin tin using 1/4 cup.  I sprinkled the tops of mine with a bit of cane sugar and left over oats.
Bake fo 30-35 minutes until browned.

Because of the lack of sugar in these muffins, they are not overly sweet.  Instead, you get more of the spice flavor from the cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice.  My husband really liked them with a little butter.  A lot of the recipes I looked at had a hard time getting the protein powder to replace the flour.  Mine were fine, but it may depend of the kind of protein powder you are using.

Nutritional Information (per muffin)
85 calories
1 g fat
0 mg cholesterol
295 mg sodium
13 g carbohydrates
2 g fiber
3 g sugar
7 g protein