Cookies Galore! (And some REAL food too, of course!)

It so good to be back in the kitchen!

After getting more groceries, I whipped up these orange molasses cookies that I found in Eating Well. They turned out well, especially for cookies that only use oats and whole wheat flour!

Wait until the next day if you didn't really like them- they get sweeter and more molasses-y overnight!

Today, I woke up and made some pumpkin and orange muffins from Recipe Book, a blog that I just started following via Swap-Bot. I'm so excited I started following her because the recipes are all amazing! The muffins are super delicious and have a great orange flavor.  I ran out of brown sugar yesterday, so I substituted sugar with a little molasses, via this tip.

And for lunch, I made some roasted pumpkin-apple soup from Eating Well. Don't even try it- it went down the sink drain.

There were a few problems: I halved the recipe that says it is originally for 12 and it looks like it would barely serve 2 people! So I added 1 more cup of chicken broth to lengthen the soup.

It had pretty much no flavor except from the little chunks of apple that my food processor refused to make smaller. It was not sweet but not savory- just bland. Then, my mom tried to add some spices to make it better, but there was no saving that dish. I guess not every dish can be a winner!

At least I baked some more gingerbread cookies! My family ate up the batch I made 2 days ago! We LOVE gingerbread and this time I made mittens and socks! So cute!

Check back later for what I made for dinner! One hint: it involved beer!

Delicious: Recipes I Tested After Thanksgiving

I know, I know- you're supposed to cook everything BEFORE Thanksgiving and then enjoy the leftovers all weekend. But my family always eats with our neighbor's family and they take over on the cooking. So I had to spend Friday and Saturday testing out some of the recipes I wanted to try. But it was delicious time spent in the kitchen!

Friday, I woke up and made pumpkin pancakes for my family to try another pumpkin recipe. It was super delicious and tasted vaguely like the pumpkin pie I had enjoyed the day before. Apparently, though, I left the picture on my mom's camera. But trust me, you should make them TOMORROW. They are so easy and super tasty!

After shopping a little in the late morning because crazy shopping in the morning is not my thing, I mixed up some apple cider vinaigrette for a salad with leftover turkey and radishes.  It was a light, refreshing salad to combat the overeating from Thursday!

I also whipped up some spice cookie dough to freeze until I get home in December from the December Martha Stewart magazine. We mixed some up for rolled and cut cookies and some for thumbprints. The pan wasn't big enough to freeze all of the thumbprints, so we just HAD to bake up the remaining three cookies and topped them with key lime marmalade. Yum!

On Saturday, I mixed up some pumpkin biscotti from Gimme Some Oven, but I used Heath bar pieces instead of nuts because my mom doesn't like nuts in baked goods. Go figure. So the biscotti taste more like Heath bars than pumpkin, but are great for a snack.

I also mixed up some of my favorite gingerbread cookie recipe to freeze for Christmas time. The recipe is actually from one of the little box kits at Barnes and Noble with the tiny gingerbread house, but here it is:

Gingerbread Recipe

Ingredients:

1 c vegetable shortening

1 c sugar

1 c dark molasses or corn syrup

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

1 tsp ginger

1 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp cinnamon

4 or 4 ½ cup flour

Melt the first 3 ingredients in the microwave.  Stir in the next 5 ingredients.  Then stir in the flour, one cup at a time. (You may want to use an electric mixer on the last cup as the dough gets quite thick and hard to stir).  Split the dough into manageable balls and wrap in plastic wrap.

Refrigerate for 30 minutes to an hour. Preheat the oven to 375°

Roll the dough, working with half of a batch at a time on a lightly floured work surface with floured hands.  Knead the dough until smooth.  Place a piece of parchment paper on a cookie sheet and roll the dough to 1/8 inches thick.

Dust the cookie cutters in flour so they don’t stick.  Bake the cookies for 6-10 minutes or until they are not over-soft when lightly touched.  Transfer to a baking rack and let cool completely.

Oh, and I whipped up this super delicious cranberry pomegranate sauce from Gimme Some Oven. It is really tart, but simple to put together and cook.

And I whipped up some peppermint mint marshmallows and will post a picture when I start handing them out as early Christmas presents with hot chocolate! Beware, though, making marshmallows is quite a process- messy and time consuming but so worth it!

Have a wonderful week!

Harry Potter BROWNIES

Well, they're actually pumpkin blondies, but they remind me of Harry Potter a lot and the Half Blooded Prince premieres tomorrow, so they are Harry Potter brownies!

I adapted this recipe from Baking Junkie, but only used about 1/2 to 3/4 cup pumpkin puree because thats what I had on hand (its slowly disappearing!) Also, I used allspice instead of cloves because I just don't want to buy cloves when allspice is a perfect substitute. I even think it has a tad better flavor also, I may cut the butter down by 4 tablespoons or so because they were a little too moist for my taste (they took a long time to cook, even though I used a 9x13 pan instead of an 8x8 pan.

You should run out and try this recipe RIGHT NOW because it smelled so good while cooking and reminded me of a pumpkin spice latte. It might just be a perfect Thanksgiving weekend dessert!

Breakfast is the BEST Meal of the Day

I had a couple of great breakfasts this weekend. I LOVE love love breakfast- I'm not quite sure why but I love everything breakfast, so I always end up bookmarking a lot of recipes.  These are the ones I tried this weekend:

Pumpkin Recipe 8:

Pumpkin Pie Overnight Oats

I liked it, but its not entirely my thing. I didn't add enough oats, so it was a little soupier than my usual oatmeals but it was nice to experiment. And I left out the chia seeds because I have never bought/ seen them before.  I'm definitely going back to her blog to make the Gingerbread Overnight Oats once its time for gingerbread (like in a few days!)

Cherry Bread

And for our church's womens' breakfast, I looked for inspiration from Martha and found this recipe for cranberry bread. But the grocery store didn't have any cranberries! Frozen or fresh! They had them last week, so I was a little shocked.  So I bought some frozen cherries because they are tart, kind of like cranberries, defrosted them and sliced them in half.  One thing about the recipe- it doesn't say to flour your fruit before putting it in the batter, but it will help the fruit from settling to the bottom of the loaf.

I have to say, Martha didn't disappoint; I think this will be my go-to fruit quick bread recipe for breakfasts and brunches from now on! It was easy and used commonly found pantry items, so you could whip it up today with fruit!

I hope you had a wonderful weekend; mine sure was great! Our football team made it to the SEC East championships (big deal) for the first time (even bigger deal) so there was plenty of celebrating going on in the city on Saturday and Sunday.

Hot and Spicy Pumpkin Recipe 7

I was going to make another pumpkin recipe, but I lost track of time and made this one instead. SO WORTH IT!. Chocolate and pumpkin and drinkable? Yes, please!

Pumpkin Hot Chocolate from Smithfield

I changed up the recipe and used vanilla soy milk because one of the girls in my small group is lactose-intolerant and I would hate to deprive anyone of hot chocolate! It was super rich and chocolate-y, almost like sipping chocolate and tasted a little like pumpkin, but mostly like the wonderful pumpkin pie spices that were added. I didn't really measure those spices out and just used the shaker to pour some in because I love the mix. It was so good! It has put me in the mood for hot chocolate more often, but in my experience, it serves 4 chocoholics and maybe 6 smaller portions. 

Definitely a keeper- it used mostly ingredients I usually have on hand, but I did have to get more milk so its feasible to whip it up in the fall season when pumpkin is abundant.  It was a wonderful warm recipe for fall (even though its not very cold here yet).

Pumpkin Recipe 6

Pumpkins for appetizers, pumpkins for cupcakes, pumpkins for chai bread, what else can you do with pumpkins?

BREAKFAST!

Sorry, I'm not sure how to make oatmeal look pretty, but its tasty!

I was so excited to try this recipe with my friend, Sarah, because I love breakfast and I love pumpkin, so we combined them!

I made pumpkin oatmeal (with rolled oats) with this recipe from Pham Fatale. It was delicious- but when I make it again, I'm going to downsize the portions a little and maybe use just a teeny bit less pumpkin. Sarah said the texture was a little too "puree-y" like baby food, so I'm going to reduce it just a bit. Also, it definitely made 3 servings so her roommate got a little breakfast surprise after we left for class. 

If you are a bigger fan of steel cut oats, I can't wait to try this recipe from Naturally Ella. I wanted to try it, but we had a short breakfast date this morning and were super hungry after 6am prayer with some friends from church.

Pumpkin = DEFINITELY a good breakfast food; not just for pie anymore!

Pumpkin Recipes 4 and 5 (and a Bridal Shower)

I had the lovely opportunity to help host a friend's bridal shower last Saturday and I claimed making the appetizers and desserts (my favorite parts of party food!) It also gave me an opportunity to use up my 15 cups of homemade pumpkin puree.

So, for the appetizer, I decided to make this pumpkin hummus recipe from Slash Food . 

PLEASE go out and make this. It was PHENOMENAL! oh, and if you don't have tahini, you can substitute peanut butter but check your local Indian or Oriental store because they will most definitely have tahini paste for a lot cheaper than a normal grocery store.

I also made pumpkin cupcakes from Gimme Some Oven. Also outstanding. The cinnamon cream cheese icing was perfect because it was sweet and cream cheesy, but the focus was totally on the pumpkin cupcakes. underneath. They were also easy to make :) I used a candy mold of wedding rings from Hobby Lobby and dark chocolate candy melts to top the iced cupcakes and some random fall sprinkles.

To round out the desserts, I made carrot cake cookies from Martha Stewart's Cookie Cookbook. They were labor intensive and the oven royally messed with them (although uniform as dough balls, some refused to flatten out and others flatted out to 3 inch diameter cookies... it was the oven's fault). They weren't super attractive, but boy, does Martha know cookies! They were super delicious and decadent. 

Overall, I had a great  time making some good food for a friend's party. It was a wonderful shower and the bride-to-be got some great stuff for her married kitchen (which I'm SO going to take advantage of, I mean use when I bake with her after she's married). 

All of the recipes were a hit, so try them before fall goes out of season (haha)!

Fall Break

Yesterday, as the beginning of my fall break, I spent a lot of time in the kitchen! After running around and getting some errands done, I settled in and bought a 16 pound pumpkin from Boone Hall Farms (it was the smallest baking pumpkin they had and it was only $3 or so!) And then I proceeded to follow this recipe and spend over 3 hours making 15 cups of pumpkin puree. I have NO IDEA what to do with all of it, but I froze most of it and a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving sounds like a good plan!

I also made some butternut squash puree and I have cleaned up the pumpkin seeds to toast tomorrow.

I also made this one-bowl blackberry cake. It was SO GOOD! It sunk in the middle for some reason (I think my oven gets hotter than it says it does and it cooked too fast).

See- it sunk in the middle :(

 I've already enjoyed being at home with a full kitchen and more recipe testing will be happening this weekend :)

Pumpkin Recipe 3

I'd been looking at this pumpkin chai bread recipe and drooling so I made it last night for my small group.

Pumpkin Chai Bread
Adapted from Scandi Foodie

1 cup cooked and mashed pumpkin
1/2 cup light olive oil
1 cup light brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1/2 cup orange juice
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cloves (I substituted ground allspice and a touch of nutmeg because I didn't have cloves)

Whisk the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Whisk together the pumpkin, olive oil, brown sugar, eggs, vanilla and orange juice. Stir in the dry ingredients and the walnuts and mix well until smooth. Pour the batter in to a greased loaf tin and bake in 350F for 40-50 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.


*And thats my new mug sweater! I'm so excited! I custom ordered it from Yellow Daisy Designs on Etsy. She was really great about working with me and giving me a custom listing (even though the color is more dandelion than marigold/mustard) I also got a matching apple jacket that I can't wait to use! And I'm packing it for my trip to Savannah this weekend. Have a great weekend!

Pumpkin Recipe 2

To be honest, I felt a little hippie-esque when I was baking up some granola on Monday. I was blogging about my TOMS and making granola and steel cut oats at the same time. But I don't want to deny that small, hippie part of myself :) The granola tastes pretty darn great!

I used a recipe from Homemade by Holman and adjusted it just a little bit.

Pumpkin Cranberry Granola

2 1/2 cups old fashion rolled oats
1/2 cup canned pumpkin
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup golden raisins
3/4 cup dried cranberries (I used a prepackaged mix of cranberries and raisins because it was a lot cheaper)
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
1 T canola or vegetable oil
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Line a large baking sheet with a Silpat or parchment paper. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix well until the wet ingredients are evenly incorporated. Spread out mix onto a baking sheet, try to get it into an even layer but don't worry too much about clumps at this point. Bake about 30 minutes, stir and spread mixture in an even layer again. Continue baking about 30 minutes more. Let cool completely and store in an airtight container.


SO DELICIOUS! It makes so much granola- I am a little overwhelmed by it, but a good overwhelmed!


I also made a big batch of steel cut oats from this recipe from Two Peas and Their Pod. It has a different texture than I was expected, but its really good! I added some brown sugar because I'm trying to reduce my sugar intake but I can't go cold-turkey!


I got to try one more of my pumpkin recipes and this one is definitely a keeper!

Pumpkin Recipe 1

I was so excited to bake for my small group (i LOVE having other people around to eat most of my experiments so I don't have to eat 4 dozen cookies.... which is what this recipe made!)

I was so excited to find pure pumpkin puree at Harris Teeter near my house last Saturday and had to start making pumpkin things for it to feel like fall!

I started with this recipe and tweaked it a tad to fit what we had.

Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies

from My Baking Addiction

yield | 48 cookies

Ingredients
2 cups all purpose flour
1 ½ cups old-fashioned oats
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
½ teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter; softened (We only had 14 tablespoons of butter instead of 16 and it was fine)
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup pure pumpkin puree
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line your baking sheet with a silicone mat or parchment paper.
2. Combine flour, oats, baking soda, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice and salt in medium bowl. Beat butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar in large mixer bowl until light and fluffy.
3. Add pumpkin, egg and vanilla extract; mix well. Add flour mixture; combine until all ingredients are incorporated. Fold in white chocolate chips and dried cherries.
4. Drop by rounded tablespoons onto prepared baking sheets.
5. Bake for 12-14 minutes or until cookies are lightly browned. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.

PLEASE take my advice and TRY THESE! So delicious and so fall- not too much pumpkin that its overwhelming but just the right way to start fall!