Pumpkin Cranberry Bread

Happy Monday! Hope everyone had a great weekend and a good start to your week today. Mondays are always tough! You know what might help you get up on a weekday morning? Having some delicious pumpkin cranberry bread waiting for you when you wake up. ;) 

(photo source)

No, that's not my own lovely photo, unfortunately! I didn't end up taking many pictures of this bread, sadly. I made it late at night and just didn't feel like taking the time to take many photos, especially since I was wrapping all of it up to give away and I was somewhat in a rush when I was doing it. My apologies!

I made this bread toward the end of last week, as I wanted to bake something yummy to take home to my family members when I traveled back to NY for the weekend. I hadn't baked with pumpkin for quite some time (not since my pumpkin gingerbread muffins in December!), but that doesn't mean I haven't stopped thinking about my beloved pumpkin. It was high time I paid it the attention it deserves though! This moist, delicious, flavorful pumpkin cranberry bread was the result.

The recipe is from Very Best Baking, but I altered the original recipe slightly. My exact measurements are below, and the original recipe can be found here. I reduced the amount of sugar from 3 cups to 2, added a combination of all-purpose and white whole wheat flour, and reduced the amount of vegetable oil and replaced some of that with a light vanilla yogurt. Oh, and lastly, the original recipe calls for orange juice or water, but instead, I used some cranberry pomegranate juice!

Of note, this recipe does make two loaves, so you can halve the recipe if you'd like. With the ingredients below, I ended up making one 8 x 4 loaf, 8 mini loaves, and two muffins (I made the muffins for Mike and me - someone had to taste test the recipe to be sure it was okay to give away!).

Ingredients:

-2 cups all-purpose flour

-1 cup white whole wheat flour

-2 tsp. cinnamon

-1 tsp. nutmeg

-1/2 tsp. cloves

-2 tsp. baking soda

-1 and 1/2 tsp. salt

-2 cups sugar

-1 can (15 oz). pumpkin

-4 eggs

-1/3 cup vegetable oil

-6 oz. light yogurt (I used vanilla)

-1/2 cup cranberry pomegranate juice

-1 cup dried cranberries (I used pomegranate flavored craisins)

(Apparently, with this recipe I was really into supporting Ocean Spray, and in particular, their cranberry pomegranate flavored products! Too funny.)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease the pans you're planning to use, or place liners in muffin pan. Combine flours, spices, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Combine sugar, pumpkin, eggs, oil, yogurt, and juice in a large mixing bowl, and beat until well blended. Add the flour mixture to the pumpkin mixture, and beat until well-incorporated. Fold in cranberries. Spoon batter into prepared pans.

Bake loaf pans for 50 to 60 minutes or until a knife or cake tester comes out clean. Bake muffins for 15 to 20 minutes. Let loaves cool in pans for 10 minutes before removing to cool completely on wire rack. Let muffins cool in pan for 3 or 4 minutes before removing to cool completely on wire rack.

Such cute lil' mini loaves!

I enjoyed my muffin served warm. Sooo good! One thing I might try differently the next time I make this recipe is to toss the dried cranberries in some flour before adding them to the batter. They did not all sink to the bottom of the loaves or muffins, but they also didn't seem to be distributed evenly from top to bottom in the loaves. In the end, no big deal though! But perhaps tossing the cranberries lightly in flour would help with that. Also, I think this recipe could be made without an electric mixer. It seemed easy enough to mix by hand, I think!

Be back again soon. :) Next time, I will have a crock pot dinner recipe to share involving another favorite orange ingredient of mine - butternut squash!

Pumpkin Gingerbread Muffins

Gingerbread! It's such a great winter flavor. I've actually been hoping to make a gingerbread flavored treat for a while now, so I'm glad I finally had an occasion to incorporate the flavor into a baked good. These muffins would be a great addition to have on your Christmas morning breakfast table. :) The pumpkin and molasses combination was very yummy.

The recipe is from King Arthur Flour. It gets great ratings online, so I figured it was worth trying!

Ingredients:

-3/4 cup butter or vegetable shortening (I used unsalted butter)

-1 and 1/4 cup brown sugar

-2 and 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

-2 tsp. baking powder

-1/2 tsp. baking soda

-3/4 tsp. salt

-2 tsp. cinnamon

-1/4 tsp. allspice

-1/2 tsp. nutmeg

-3 large eggs

-2 Tbsp. molasses

-1 can (15 oz.) pumpkin

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin pan with cupcake liners. Or, if you'd like to make this recipe into bread, grease two 8 x 4 or 9 x 5 loaf pans. In a large bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until well blended. Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices, and mix well; the mixture will be crumbly. Add the eggs, one at a time, scraping the bottom and sides of the bowl after each addition. Beat in the molasses and pumpkin until well incorporated. Scoop the batter into the muffin cups or loaf pans. If using muffin cups, fill 2/3 to 3/4 of the way full. Bake the muffins for 15 - 18 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Bake the loaves for 50 - 55 minutes.

For me, this recipe made 18 large muffins and 12 mini muffins. Now, you should know that I didn't follow the KAF recipe exactly with regard to the ingredients. The recipe calls for allspice, but I don't have allspice so I just added some ginger (maybe 1/4 to 1/2 tsp.) and cloves (1/8 to 1/4 tsp.). Also, the original recipe actually includes an orange glaze, which I bet would be quite yummy on these muffins. However, I honestly didn't have the time to add one more step to these muffins when I was making them! Also, the recipe has optional additions of pecans, chocolate chips, and/or chopped crystalized ginger. So, as you can see, I really kept this recipe as minimal as it could be. If you make these though, definitely refer to the original recipe to see if you might like to make some of the additions I didn't make!

I was very satisfied with this recipe overall. The muffins were flavorful and moist (a must, in my opinion, when it comes to homemade muffins!). The only thing I would wish for is a stronger gingerbread flavor. The recipe only calls for two tablespoons of molasses. I'm not sure if just adding more molasses would be an okay thing to do, as it might change the proportions of the ingredients in the wrong way... However, if I were to give my amateur guess, I would think that another tablespoon or two of molasses would actually be okay to add. It definitely wouldn't make the batter too liquid-y judging by the consistency of the batter when I made these, so actually, the more I think about it, the more I think that adding more like four tablespoons of molasses to the batter would be just fine. I think I'll do that the next time I make these, as there will be a next time! :)

Easy Pumpkin Crumble Cake

Greetings, friends! About a week ago I was busy making this pumpkin crumble cake to have for Thanksgiving dessert with my family the next day. The adjective easy is incredibly accurate for this dessert. Talk about simple! This recipe was just what I was looking for - no fuss ingredients, takes very little time, and delicious, of course! Delicious is always a requirement.

This recipe is from the tried and true, always yummy blog, Our Best Bites (I've mentioned this one a few times before). The original recipe can be found here but I've written it below for you as well. Note: part of what makes this so easy is that it uses yellow cake mix. Although I do love making things from scratch, you also know that I love a shortcut from time to time (as evidenced by my beloved cake mix cookies here, here, and here!).

Ingredients:

-1 box yellow or white cake mix (I used an 18.25 oz. box of yellow)

-1 to 2 sticks of butter (see notes in instructions)

-1 can pumpkin (15 oz.)

-2 eggs

-1 can sweetened condensed milk (14 oz.)

-1 tsp. cinnamon

-1/2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice

-1/4 tsp. ginger

-1/8 tsp. cloves

-1/8 tsp. nutmeg

-1/2 tsp. salt

-1/3 cup chopped pecans

-1/2 tsp. additional cinnamon for topping

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place 2 cups of the cake mix in a bowl. Cut in 3 Tbsp. of chilled butter. I used my fingers (as the original recipe suggests) to crumble the butter into small pieces. Place this cake mix and butter mixture in the bottom of a 13 x 9 pan (I greased mine even though the recipe didn't specify) and press flat with your hands/fingers.

Mix the pumpkin, eggs, sweetened condensed milk, and spices until smooth. Pour on top of the cake mixture in the pan. Take the rest of the dry cake mix and mix in 1/2 tsp. cinnamon. Sprinkle it all over top of the pumpkin mixture. Before you put the remaining cake mix in the pan though, measure it so you know how much you have, and here's why: for every cup of cake mix, you'll need about 3 Tbsp. of melted butter. Since cake mixes vary in size (they're not all 18.25 oz.!), you may have a different amount of cake mix left than the next person after you use the first 2 cups of it for the bottom layer.

After sprinkling the cake mix and cinnamon mixture on top of the pumpkin layer, sprinkle the pecans evenly over top. Then, depending on how much cake mix you sprinkled on, melt the appropriate amount of butter and then drizzle the butter evenly over top of everything. That's it!

SPICES. :) I used more than what the recipe listed.

Bake for about 40 minutes or so, or until a toothpick or knife comes out clean. Serve it warm, chilled, or room temp - whatever you prefer! I served it room temp on Thanksgiving. I also served it with cool whip, but you could definitely make your own whipped topping or serve it with classic vanilla ice cream or any other yummy ice cream flavor. Options options!!

Now, I have to confess that I somehow forgot to add the salt. Whoops! But, as far as the various ingredients go, that was a good one to forget since the lack of salt wouldn't affect the taste as much as say, a lack of pumpkin would. ;) Also, I didn't have pumpkin pie spice so I just added a little extra of everything (cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg).

Super simple and super tasty. It was a nice change from the more traditional pumpkin pie (even though I love that too!!).

I made this the day before Thanksgiving which worked out well since I didn't take up any space in the kitchen or need to use any dishes on Thanksgiving day. I stayed out of my mom's way as she was cooking. :)

Easy as pie! ;)

Pumpkin Pudding Graham Cracker "Cake"

This dessert recipe has to be one of the most simple dishes ever... Seriously. Trust me on this one. Anyone can do it! This recipe is actually the same as my easy icebox cake that I shared with you last year. Essentially it's just a dessert with layered graham crackers, pudding, and cool whip.... Hellooooo easy! I thought it would be more fun to call it pumpkin pudding graham cracker "cake" this time around though. ;-)

Ingredients:

-1 box pumpkin flavored pudding (I used JELL-O's pumpkin spice flavor)

-8 to 10 full graham crackers

-cool whip

Instructions:

Make the pudding according to the directions on the box and make sure it's set before proceeding. In an 8 x 8 or 9 x 9 pan, place graham cracker sheets so that they cover the bottom. My pan was an 8 x 8, and it took a little more than 4 full crackers to cover the bottom. Next, spread half the pudding over top of the graham crackers until it's smooth. Cover with another layer of graham crackers and then another layer of pudding (use the rest of it). Let the dish sit overnight in the fridge (or for several hours) so that the pudding seeps into the graham crackers and makes them soft.

If desired, you can spread cool whip evenly over top of the pudding before slicing the "cake" into pieces to serve, or you can just serve it by putting a dollop of cool whip on each piece. The latter way may be slightly safer just in case someone doesn't care for cool whip!

I forgot to take a picture again after I smoothed out the pudding here on the top layer.

I also forgot to take a picture until half the dish was already gone! Oops. It went fast. :)

Yummy layers! So simple yet delicious and fun.

You can obviously make this with any pudding flavor you'd like! One time I made it with pistachio pudding and another time I went wild n' crazy and made this with two different pudding flavors...wowzers! And then I even threw in a couple layers of fresh fruit. Yikes! Something must have gotten into me that day. I just went crazy. And it's also always fun to top this with some fun, colored sprinkles or maybe some crushed graham crackers for an added crunchy texture. You can also make this in a larger pan like a 13 x 9, but you may need to use two boxes of pudding with the larger dish and obviously more graham crackers too. :)

Happy mid-week, all!

Pumpkin Waffles

Warning. I'm back on the pumpkin kick! Well, let's be honest. I never really went off it... I've still been creating yummy treats with my beloved pumpkin all along. I've just taken a break for a couple posts from sharing the recipes with you.

I made these pumpkin waffles a few weeks ago and thought they were super yummy. They take a little extra time to make, but if you've got the time, they're totally worth it!! The recipe is from Smitten Kitchen, a wonderful food blog that I've mentioned before. I'm posting the original ingredients below, although when I made these, I halved the recipe. I think that half the recipe made about 10 or so waffles for me?

Ingredients:

-2 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (you could easily do half AP and half whole wheat here)

-1/3 cup light brown sugar, packed

-2 and 1/4 tsp. baking powder

-1 tsp. baking soda

-1/2 tsp. salt

-2 tsp. cinnamon

-1 tsp. ginger

-1/4 tsp. cloves

-4 lage eggs, separated

-2 cups well-shaken buttermilk

-1 cup canned pumpkin

-6 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted

Instructions:

Preheat waffle iron. Sift together flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices. Separate eggs. Whisk egg yolks in a large bowl with buttermilk, pumpkin, and melted butter until smooth. In a mixing bowl with the whisk attachment, whisk the egg whites until they hold a soft peak (like in the second picture below). Fold them into the waffle batter until just combined, Brush waffle iron lightly with vegetable oil or spray it with cooking spray. Spoon batter into iron, spreading it quickly, and cook until done (however long that is for your particular waffle maker!). I used around 3/4 to one cup of batter for every two waffles. If desired, keep waffles warm in a 250 degree oven while you cook the remaining batter.

The Saturday morning that I made these, I actually ate mine with both butter AND maple syrup (the real stuff, of course). For some reason I was in the mood for both tasty toppings. Obviously you can enjoy them however you would like to. :) And there's a chance I ate the leftover ones cold.... And there's also a chance that they were delicious cold. Just sayin'!

Pumpkin Banana Muffins

Happy weekend, all! The hot topic in much of the northeast is the SNOW we got this past weekend! In Boston, we ended up getting much less than predicted so it didn't really affect us too much. But it is pretty darn chilly out there! To combat today's chilly weather, I've been doing some baking...some "surprise" chocolate cupcakes (recipe coming later!) and I'm about to make some homemade applesauce with some really yummy apples I picked yesterday at Drew Farms here in MA. Love love love the smell of applesauce cooking on the stove...

Enough rambling though - onto the recipe at hand, pumpkin banana muffins! 

This was a fun new recipe to try. I love both pumpkin and banana flavors but had never actually thought to put them together. Brilliant! The end result was a fluffy, moist muffin that had hints of each flavor but wasn't overpowering really one way or another. I found this recipe through Foodbuzz, and it's a recipe from a blog called Alida's Kitchen. The recipe is actually for pumpkin banana bread but I made muffins instead. It's an incredibly easy recipe - and healthy too!

Ingredients:

-1 cup all-purpose flour

-1 cup white whole wheat flour

-1/2 cup brown sugar, packed

-1 tsp. baking powder

-1/2 tsp. baking soda

-1 tsp. cinnamon

-1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice (I added my own mixture of cloves, nutmeg, and ginger here)

-2 bananas, mashed

-1 cup canned pumpkin

-1/4 cup canola oil

-2 eggs

-1 tsp. vanilla

-1 tablespoon brown sugar (for topping, optional)

-1 tsp. cinnamon (for topping, optional)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray loaf pan or line muffin pan with paper liners. Set aside.

In a large bowl, mix together the flours, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and spices. In a medium bowl, whisk together the bananas, pumpkin, oil, eggs, and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients to the banana-pumpkin mixture, and gently fold until combined. If using, combine the sugar and cinnamon for topping (I did not use this).

Pour batter into prepared pan(s). Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar, if desired. Bake for 40-45 minutes for a loaf, or about 15 - 17 minutes for muffins (that's how long mine took anyway!), or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan for 5 minutes. Remove and let cool completely on a wire rack. For me, this made about one dozen regularly sized muffins and a dozen mini ones too.

These were excellent served warm, and I thought they were actually better one to two days after I baked them as opposed to the day of baking. So, if you have the patience, I recommend waiting until the next day to eat them. ;-) The flavors seemed to come through more after a day or two.

cute lil' mini!

fun Halloween muffin liner...

I actually completely forgot to take more pictures of these tasty treats! I baked them the night before heading up to VT to spend a couple days with my family, who was vacationing up there. I brought the muffins with me, and we all enjoyed them the next morning yet I forgot to take pics! I guess being out of my usual environment through me off. :)

Hopefully I'll be back again soon!

Pumpkin, Sweet Potato, and Black Bean Chili

Deeeelicious. That's the one word I'd use to describe this chili (well, if I had to choose only one word ;-)). If I could use more words (and why can't I?), I'd also use hearty, flavorful, comforting, easy, and healthy.

And it's made with pumpkin beer! Yes, please! The recipe only calls for one cup of beer, which means there's some leftover. And you know what that means...

I found this recipe from a wonderful blog, Healthy Food for Living. I'm feeling lazy this evening so I'm not going to re-type the recipe here (my apologies!). But, please head on over to Healthy Food for Living and read it there. And check out the other great recipes there while you're at it!

I did make a couple changes to the recipe...namely because I didn't have all the exact ingredients on hand. I did not add actual chili peppers, but I had some great dried chili spices that I added. And also, the recipe calls for tomato sauce/puree, but I only had canned diced tomatoes on hand so that's what I used.

I also made some homemade herb drop biscuits to go with this yummy dish. The biscuits turned out fabulously! I was really happy with them. The recipe will be shared with you in the near future...

You have to try this dish! It is totally a keeper of a recipe, and I can't wait to make it again. :)