Currently Eating: Pumpkin and Protein

I've been trying to use up a monster Costco tub of Kaizen Whey protein. Bought for a great price but this stuff is way too sweet and thin to be satisfying on its own. Now, its past the point of returning and I have more than 30 servings to get through. So to try to make the best of it, I've been hunting baked and other options for using this stuff up.

Since pumpkin is the thing right now, I bought a large can of pure pumpkin pure to experiment with and found a pumpkin protein muffin recipe here, on Clean Food Crush that looked promising. But I've been burned many times with protein baking recipes (tasteless, bad consistency, not actually full of protein) so I used the rest of the pumpkin on "normal" (according to David...he hates when I "cook" with protein powder) energy ball treats found on Running with Spoons. Energy balls, can I just call them balls? or bites. Yes, let's go with bites.

Pumpkin Protein Oat Muffins

(taken and adapted from Clean Food Crush)

made 22 cupcake sized 'muffins'

Ingredients

2 cups dry rolled oats

2 scoops protein powder (used 2.5 scoops of Kaizen's whey isolate in chocolate)

2 cups all-natural Pumpkin Puree

1 cup unsweetened almond milk (used cashew, which I had on hand)

2 whole eggs, or 6 egg whites (used 6 egg whites)

1 tsp Stevia granules or sweetener of choice

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 cup Cacao chips, or Lily’s brand sweetened with stevia ( I skipped this)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

In large bowl combine all wet ingredients, in another, all dry. Combine.

Scoop batter evenly into muffin tins.

Bake 17-18 minutes, until centers are just set.

When you mix Kaizen powder with water, it tastes so artificially sweet so I thought I could get away without adding sugar into the batter. I was wrong and next time, I'm going to add a couple of tablespoons. The muffins basically tasted like bread which is great because...yay bread. Bread is edible but it could have done with some sugar. I've been having these with a small smear of peanut butter or jam. Overall, I'm pretty satisfied since they are an edible way to use up my protein powder and the macro split is pretty good. With some tweaking though, I think these can be even more enjoyable. I would add some more pumpkin pie related spices, sugar, and salt next time. PUT THIS IN THE FRIDGE. On the counter, I noticed these went bad in under a week.

With my variations, the nutrition for the whole batch was (w/ 1 tbs of sugar):
Calories: 1408kcal
Carbs: 173g
Fat: 16g
Protein: 145g
Sugar: 27g

No Bake Pumpkin Bites
(taken from Running with Spoons)
made about 14

Ingredients:
1/2 cup (90 g) dates, pitted (I used about 13)
1/4 cup (60 g) pumpkin puree
2 Tbsp (30 ml) maple syrup
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup (60 g) rolled oats
1/4 cup (28 g) coconut flour
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
She rolls the balls in cinnamon and sugar but I skipped this.

Instructions:

Pulse all ingredients in food processor till broken down.

Roll into balls with hands.

Set in fridge.

Nutrition for whole batch:

Calories: 691kcal

Carbs: 146g

Fat: 9g

Protein: 15g

Sugar: 90g

Admittedly these tasted much better than the muffins. But of course they would, they're filled with sweetness. The maple syrup taste was more pronounced than the pumpkin though. I would have preferred to scale that back and add in more pumpkin pie flavours instead. If I do so, I'm predicting that I might need to compensate with more of binder (the dates). Pretty tasty!

What have you been cooking up in the kitchen?