Oct 17
Can you believe Halloween is just around the corner? It certainly doesn’t feel like it’s been a full one year since the last one. I could swear that time is speeding up. Just for the time it takes you to read this post, I’d like to take you back in time to last year’s Halloween. Read more
Nov 8
Cheesecakes are not one of my favorite dessert foods. It’s the cream cheese that I don’t like. I like cream cheese when it’s sweetened, like in frosting, or when mixed into muffins, but I don’t like it on its own or when the flavor of the cream cheese is too prominent.
This month’s Taste Of Home magazine featured quite a few cheesecake recipes and they all looked amazing to me. It made me wish that I liked cheesecakes! I decided to try one of the recipes; maybe my tastes had changed since I last had cheesecake. I chose the pumpkin cheesecake, because I love pumpkin.
Now, I’ve never made a cheesecake before, so I was entering new territory! The process of putting it together was extremely easy. I was looking forward to having a cheesecake that was as beautiful and yummy-looking as was in the picture in the magazine.
But, it ended up being not as pretty…
Unfortunately, dulce de leche isn’t available in most stores, but you can make it yourself at home quite easily with a can of sweetened condensed milk. Read more
Oct 9
In Parke County, Indiana there is an annual event known as the Covered Bridge Festival that runs for a week in early October (it actually starts today, too bad it is rainy and dreary!).
Parke County is famous for its 32 covered bridges, and has festivals throughout the entire county each year to celebrate their bridges. Throughout the county you’ll find some great seasonal foods and classic favorite foods such as baked potatoes, onion blossoms, barbecue chicken, sausages. The smell of the air during the festival just screams FOOD at you! Read more
Oct 7
A couple of weeks ago I was leisurely browsing through Bake It Pretty, in particular the Halloween decorations. When I saw the zombie hand cupcake toppers, I knew I had to order them and make a batch of Halloween cupcakes. I have never made a Halloween cupcake before; the closest I’ve came were these pumpkin cupcakes with cinnamon cream cheese frosting, but they weren’t exactly scary!
But these are! This is what I created with Martha Stewart’s awesome Halloween cupcake liners, Bake It Pretty’s zombie hand toppers and a couple of Oreo cookies. Read more
Apr 9
Trying to use up the rest of the canned pumpkin, I’ve been on a pumpkin recipe search. After pumpkin bread, comes pumpkin pancakes. I’m pretty sure I’ve never eaten pumpkin pancakes before but after trying this recipe I’m definitely going to be making them again.
The recipe is a highly rated one at allrecipes.com. I didn’t change a thing about the recipe. I took the advice from one of the comments and did not thin out the batter with more milk; the comment stated that the batter is supposed to be thick and the addition of more milk would dull the taste of the pumpkin. Instead, the comment said that the batter was supposed to be poured into the pan, then spread out with the back of a spoon.
The comment section has a lot of other tips and their personal changes to the recipe as well, definitely worth a read.
The recipe says it yields 6 servings, and stated that it made 12 pancakes. Following the recipe, I used 1/4 cup of batter per pancake and ended up with 17 pancakes! Pictured above is only 16, however, as I ate the very first one! They taste great with a bit of butter and maple syrup. :)
Apr 6
I realize this is not the right time of the year for pumpkin-based foods, but I had a craving! I haven’t made this bread since living in Australia, about 3 years ago now, and I loved it then.
The recipe I used comes from Simply Recipes (but left out the walnuts). After tasting the pumpkin bread today and trying to compare it to what I remember from 3 years ago, it doesn’t seem to be quite as tasty as it was back then. I used a butternut squash instead of pumpkin – I boiled chunks of the squash, peeled off the skin and pureed the squash in a blender. Today I used a canned pureed pumpkin. This is the only difference. Maybe the squash made the difference, and/or the fact that it was fresh.
It is still a nice bread, however, and I would recommend it if you’d like a change from the usual banana bread. It’s almost like a bread version of pumpkin pie, but not quite, and it is really moist. Also tastes nice with coffee. :)
Nov 5
Before I begin this, you may notice that I baked pumpkin chocolate chip squares the day before yesterday. I placed the majority of them in the freezer and can note that they are freezing well. Now, I have leftover pumpkin and chocolate from that recipe and before the pumpkin went bad I just had to use it, of course. In yet another pumpkin and chocolate recipe. Don’t you just hate Martha Stewart and her yummy unhealthy recipes! 
Anyway, I’ve seen these baked on a number of blogs lately – Martha Stewart’s pumpkin swirl brownies. Here are mine, on which I sprinkled leftover chocolate chips instead of nuts. I like nuts, but not on any foods!
The main things I did differently, besides replace the nuts with chocolate chips were using semisweet chocolate chips instead of bittersweet chocolate; baking these in an 8×11-inch pan, which required a slightly longer baking time, I noticed (by about 10-15 minutes); using only 3 eggs instead of 4 because 3 was all I had.
Now, I did use the cayenne pepper and I personally think that 1/4 teaspoon is barely noticeable, and I’m very sensitive to such spices. If you do really want to taste it, I’d suggest adding a pinch or two more.
Oh, and I’ve placed the majority of these in the freezer too. They’re too good and too unhealthy to eat all at once, so these should last us a while.
I love the taste of chocolate and pumpkin together, so when I saw this Martha Stewart recipe for pumpkin chocolate chip squares, I had to bake it. I was reluctant to do so, with 2 sticks of butter and 1 1/4 cups of sugar! Wow! If you read through the comments on the recipe page there are a few substitutions to use to make it a tiny bit healthier, for example, the addition of applesauce to replace some of the butter.
Anyway, some things to note… I did not find pumpkin pie spice, so I used the recommended spice mix on the recipe page. However I reduced the allspice to 1/4 teaspoon, as I would have done also for the cloves if I had had any. In the comments section of the recipe page a few people also note that the addition of 12 ounces of chocolate chips was too much. I could see why, so I only added a little less than 3/4 of a 12 ounce bag to the batter.
To get some nice chocolate chips on top of the cake/brownie/blondie/whatever, sprinkle a few chocolate chips on top of the batter right after you have spread it out in the pan. Otherwise all the chips will be hidden in the batter after baking.
These babies are a gooey mess of pumpkin and chocolate! So tasty, so unhealthy, so gooey! They are definitely best cut into small squares because a big square is so rich it is likely to make your belly hurt! And of course these need to be chased down with a tall glass of cold fat free milk!
I’ve really been in the mood for pumpkin ever since my pumpkin cupcakes with cinnamon cream cheese frosting turned out so well. I bought a can of pumpkin at the store the last time I was there and I’ve been trying to think of what to do with it. I decided on chocolate pumpkin cupcakes with pumpkin buttercream frosting.
For the cupcakes, I used a recipe I found from Country Living magazine online and divided the recipe into fourths. The recipe said it would make 36 cupcakes, so I intended on getting 9 cupcakes; I actually ended up with 15! I added about 1/8 teaspoon of ginger to the recipe. The cupcakes rose to a very nice dome, I was very pleased. The cake itself is fluffy and moist.
For the frosting, I found a wonderful, no, awesome, pumpkin buttercream recipe from A Year In The Kitchen, originally created for pumpkin sandwich cookies. This frosting really added the flavor to the cupcakes; it’s a perfect pairing. I’m so glad I found this recipe!
I’ll also add that my daughter greatly approves of this recipe. She normally only eats the frosting off cupcakes, but with these cupcakes she ate the whole thing! She gives them two thumbs up!
Oct 13
I am a member of a neighborhood women’s group that meets every month. This month’s meeting has an Autumn theme and members can bring their favorite Autumn foods. Of course, I had to bake pumpkin cupcakes!
These pumpkin cupcakes are absolutely delicious, soft and moist. I am so pleased with the way they turned out. The original recipe called for fresh nutmeg, but I used ground nutmeg instead. Also, the recipe called for coarse salt, but I decided to use regular table salt instead – instead of the 1 tablespoon coarse salt, I used a little less than 1/2 teaspoon salt. The recipe is from Martha Stewart – and warning about that recipe, it says it makes 18 cupcakes, but the actual yield is closer to 30.
I decided to use a cinnamon cream cheese frosting on these cupcakes and this recipe can be found at Recipezaar. This is a really nice frosting as well. I used just a pinch more cinnamon than the recipe called for.
I used Brach’s mellowcreme pumpkins and a jar of Fox Run Halloween sprinkles to decorate the cupcakes.
Jamieanne has a passion for food and baking that dates back to her early childhood. She is the author of The Sweetest Kitchen blog, which features her favorite recipes from magazines, cookbooks and other food blogs. Keep up to date with Jamieanne and her blog by following on:
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