Mini Cinnamon Sugar Pumpkin Muffins

Alright. If you've been following my recent posts, you've read all about our Pumpkin Party. I posted reviews on several other recipes I tried (go to the Recipes I'm Trying page for more info), and this will be my final post. I simply could not leave you without this recipe. Amaaaazing.

These mini-muffins were insanely easy to make. Seriously, the hardest part was waiting for them to finish baking. In the recipe, you dip the muffins in butter and then cinnamon and sugar after they cool, but you could just as easily leave that off if you wanted to. They are tasty on their own. Although, why you would want to is beyond me.

These little buggers went so fast at the party, I was almost disappointed that I didn't stockpile some for myself before anyone came over. If you want to make them for your own festive party, click on this link. You still have plenty of time in the season to enjoy these. They would also make a wonderful addition to your Thanksgiving pies, because, let's face it, there is no such thing as too many desserts on Thanksgiving Day.

The only critique for this recipe is in their name, because these muffins are really more like little donuts. Their name should be Mini Cinnamon Sugar Pumpkin Donuts (quite the mouthful). Except they're healthier, because they're baked - not fried. Except they're probably not really healthier, because they are doused in butter and sugar. But, why are we wasting time debating that? You need go to your kitchen and make these right now.

Pumpkin Pillow (Wontons)

Oh. My. Goodness.

This is my new favorite recipe of all time. I seriously think that I will have to make these every Fall for the rest of my life. In fact, that might not be often enough.

I made these for my annual Pumpkin Party, going for all-things-pumpkin. I cannot think of anything bad to say about them. So, you just have to make them yourself. That's all I can say.

A couple of tips: When I went to the grocery store, looking for the wonton wrappers, I couldn't find them among the prepared biscuits/pizza dough, etc. You know the aisle, over with all the Pillsbury stuff. And this is where I made my mistake. I didn't ask any of the store clerks for help. Turns out, they are apparently in the frozen section of the store. I was told this by a friend, I have not actually seen them myself. But I have no reason to believe otherwise.

But since I couldn't find them, I bought some Pillsbury croissant dough, thinking that would be pretty close to wontons, right? My husband disagreed. And I'm glad he did. Because when I came home, ready to make these pumpkin pillows, he suggested that I look online for a wonton dough recipe. I found this.

Making this dough from scratch kept me up baking much later than I'd intended, but it was well worth it. I don't think these pillows would have been the same in a croissant. Plus, it was fun to try something new. I'd never made wonton dough before. You only need four ingredients, and one of them doesn't really count because it's water. If you make your dough from scratch, be prepared to think that you made it wrong. The dough was a lot tougher than I expected and I almost threw it out. But my husband convinced me that it was supposed to be that way - so I rolled it out nice and thin on my table, and sure enough it ended up being the perfect consistency. We sliced it up into triangles, dropped a dollop of the pumpkin goodness inside, and then folded it over to make the little pillow. We let them sit overnight in our fridge before deep-frying them the next day, just in time for the party.

The only other thing that I would say about this recipe is for the dip. It's very simple: you melt about 15 Kraft caramels in the microwave and mix it with sour cream. When I did this, though, the caramels hardened back up very quickly and didn't want to melt into the sour cream. I ended up having to microwave the mix slowly (because I didn't want the sour cream to react funny to the heat), and the caramels finally melted enough to mix in to the sour cream. I think that the problem is that the sour cream was so cold from the fridge, it made the melted caramel harden back up. Another option might be to melt the caramels on the stovetop, and then slowly add the sour cream. That might work best.

No matter how you make the dip, when you eat it with the pumpkin pillows they are little pieces of heaven. Literally. (And now every person who has ever watched and loved Friends should be thinking about the time when Monica made candy for her neighbors.)

Try this recipe. Today.

Doesn't that look like the most appetizing thing you have seen, ever?

Pumpkin Monkey Bread

So, Eric and I had our annual Pumpkin Party to celebrate the Fall Season, and the coming holidays! We invite all our friends to bring over their pumpkins and carve them together. Then we serve tons of pumpkin snacks and pastries. My house smells amazing.

This year, I picked out a ton of recipes that I'd pinned on Pinterest (if you don't know what that is, you need to. Look it up and create yourself an account), and saved them all for baking the night before the party. So, my husband and I stayed up until 2am baking. This hardly ever happens anymore now that I'm a mommy. It was a bit nostalgic for me, reminding me of my college days. And somehow, between all of our clattering of pots and pans, Nora stayed asleep. Still amazed by that.

Anyway, one of our picks was to make Monkey Bread. If you've never had it before, you need to buy yourself a bundt pan and make this recipe (assuming you don't already have a bundt pan). For the normal version, click here. For our party, though, I decided to make it with pumpkin. This meant that, instead of buying the already prepared Pillsbury dough, I made it from scratch (only one of the reasons why our night went so late). I got the recipe from this blog.

Before I critique it, you must know that all monkey bread is delicious. So, you really can't go wrong however you make it. However, I was a bit disappointed that that pumpkin flavor was practically nonexistent. The whole reason why I made it from scratch, and I couldn't really taste any of the pumpkin. I even asked some of my guests if they could, wondering if it was just me, but none of them knew it had pumpkin in it either. I don't know how this would change the consistency, but if I had to do it again, I would use more of the canned pumpkin. Maybe even add some pumpkin pie spice to see if that "spiced" it up. :)

In the end, I think that I was the only one disappointed in it, though. The monkey bread disappeared without any prompting. So everyone else seemed to enjoy it just fine.

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Bread

I had a friend over this morning to talk about photography - swapping stories and tips. Before she came over, I scoured my pantry for something to make since I knew that we would be hungry. I was in a Fall mood, so something with pumpkin sounded especially pleasing.

I found several recipes that required a yellow cake box mix which I didn't have (although, one of the many lessons I learned this morning is that I should always have several boxes of that cake mix! It was in 9/10 of the recipes I looked up!), but I finally found this recipe. A pumpkin cream cheese breakfast bread. Oh wow. If the picture itself didn't sell it, the scrumptious aroma coming from my oven sure did... but that's jumping ahead.

I had all the ingredients and so I set about making this only an hour before my friend was to arrive. If you read my post about the Andes Mint Chocolate Cake, you will begin to notice a trend. My spontaneous nature can bring a lot of unexpected joy to my life, to be sure. But on the other hand, my lack of planning almost always comes back to teach me a lesson. One that I fail to remember time and again, at least, where baking applies. :)

I followed this recipe step by step, but I was rushing. So when the recipe asked me to split to ingredients in half for two different bread pans (can I just note that this whole fiasco could have maybe been avoided if I had had two bread pans), I didn't stop to take the time to actually measure out half. Perhaps, if I had had two bread pans, I would have been able to see right away that I was putting way too much of the mixture into the pan. So then it was time to add the cream cheese part. Once I did, it was glaringly obvious that I had put too much in -- and I still had to layer it once more with more of the mixture, covering the cream cheese with more pumpkin bread. I knew just from looking at it that it was going to be bad once it hit the oven. But I didn't have time to fix it, and plus, the layers were already set. So I just forged ahead and hoped for the best.

Ten minutes in, it was already overflowing off the top and falling into a heap on my oven floor.

Of course, if you know me well, you would probably expect to see that picture. It would be more shocking if my experiment turned out exactly as it should. Needless to say, my kitchen is a mess and I should probably stop writing and go clean it up. But, as I am, I fully intend to enjoy a huge slice of this pumpkin bread. Because even if it looks atrocious, it tastes divinnnne.

Andes Mint Chocolate Cake

Last week my mom and dad stopped by for a night on their way up to Baltimore. So my little sister, Steph, and I had an idea to make an Andes Mint Chocolate Cake for them. We went on Pinterest, of course, in search for our recipe and found the perfect one. After going out to buy all the ingredients, we came back and got working. As my mom and dad were already traveling, we knew we didn't have long to finish our masterpiece. So we rushed things a bit. Starting with the greasing of the pan - instead of using butter and flour, we used an olive oil spray and flour... first mistake. 

The cakes smelled divine and we increasingly became more excited. Steph turned on some youtube music on our laptop and we started jamming out as we baked. Nora even got into it; swaying and bobbing her head to the beat. And then we pulled the cakes out of the oven and glanced at the clock. Mom and dad would be arriving in less than thirty minutes. So we decided not to wait for the cakes to cool. Instead, we flipped them over and knocked on the pans until we heard the cake pop out... second mistake. 

The top part of the cake was perfect and came out smoothly, but the bottom half stayed stuck in the pan. In a moment of genius, I decided that it was redeemable. If we very quickly used the icing, it would melt on the cake and fill in all the spots where the cake was missing. Turns out, I was right! The icing did melt, but instead of helping our cause, it seemed to make it worse as it continued to melt until the entire cake started to slide away.

I still thought it was redeemable as I prepared to cover it with the chocolate coating, thinking that would cover the imperfections. And, once again, it only made it worse.

My parents walked into the house, took one look, and asked, "What is that?!" 

You mean, you couldn't tell? It's a cake of course! 

We had hoped it would brighten their day and in the end, it did. Here's why: 

On the left, the cake it was meant to be. On the right, the cake it was destined to be, with Steph and I as bakers. 

This cake tasted fantastic - with homemade everything. Cake, icing and chocolate ganache. But, if you decide to make this cake yourself, definitely use butter to grease the pans. And definitely wait for the cakes to cool before flipping them out. You may already know this, in which case, you are already a step ahead of me.

Lessons learned.