Friday Favorites, 9.16.11

Happy Friday! TGIF! I need some new Friday-related greetings... Ideas? Thanks! :)

It was a quiet week for me in terms of baking. I did have time to bake but I chose to use my time for other things (e.g., wedding planning research!). But don't you worry. I won't let the wedding consume my life over this next year. Baking will be a priority again soon!

What did I make this week though? Pumpkin ice cream! Amaaaaazing. I can't wait to share that recipe with you soon. In the meantime though, I thought I'd share a few pumpkin-based recipes I drooled over this week. Fall officially begins next week, friends! We must come prepared with lots of pumpkin recipes. :) Of course, there are many other fall flavors of which I am a huge fan. But let's begin with pumpkin, shall we?

1) Pumpkin Pie Snickerdoodle Bars from Lovin' From the Oven

With a name like that, how can these not be good?? Oh my goodness.

2) Pumpkin Doughnuts from Steph's Bite by Bite

Recently discovered this blog and am highly enjoying it...  She's got some great recipes on there! And these pumpkin doughnuts with a caramel topping look to-die-for!

3) Pumpkin Bread Pudding from According to Kelly

Talk about comfort food. This is perfect for the cooler weather coming our way soon!

4) Pumpkin Hummus from Naturally Ella

I had to throw in one savory recipe! What a great idea for hummus. Never thought of making it pumpkin-flavored!

5) Pumpkin Pancakes with Cinnamon Butter from Raspberri Cupcakes

These would make the perfect fall weekend breakfast! And that cinnamon butter? Wowzahs.

Can you believe that I went to the grocery store yesterday specifically to stock up on canned pumpkin but I could not find any?!?? Yikes. Not good. Not this early in the season. Come Thanksgiving I might expect some difficulty finding it, but not this early on before fall has even started! Once I do find it, I am going to buy cans and cans of pumpkin... I may need to rent a storage unit for all the pumpkin I'm going to buy, folks.

Finally, do all of you know about Pinterest? Love love love this site! You've gotta check it out if you haven't yet. All of the recipes in my round-up today I found on pinterest. I am becoming slightly addicted to it. It's become especially useful for gathering wedding-related ideas. Come on over and follow some of my boards, if you'd like!

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

Homemade Peanut Butter Chip Ice Cream

Did you know that today, September 13th, is National Peanut Day? Neither did I until several of the various food blog and websites that I frequently visit mentioned it today. Even though my peanut butter chip ice cream recipe does not directly contain peanuts, they're obviously in there somewhere since this recipe involves peanut butter. ;-) So I thought it was fitting that I share this recipe with you today!

As you may know, if you read my last Friday Favorites post, I received an ice cream maker from Mike for my birthday in August. Hooray! I've been wanting one. :)

Last week we made our first batch together. Peanut butter chip was our flavor of choice! We used a recipe right from the Cuisinart booklet that came with the machine.

Ingredients:

-1 cup peanut butter (not natural)

-2/3 cup granulated sugar

-1 cup whole milk

-2 cups heavy cream

-1 tsp. vanilla extract

-3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (or whatever type of chips you choose)

Instructions:

In a medium mixing bowl on low speed, combine the peanut butter and sugar until smooth. Add the milk and mix on low speed until the sugar is dissolved, about 1 to 2 minutes. Stir in the heavy cream and vanilla. Cover and refrigerate 1 to 2 hours, or overnight.

Turn on your ice cream maker, and pour the mixture into the freezer bowl and let mix until thickened, about 15 to 20 minutes. Five minutes before mixing is completed, add the chips through the top and let mix completely. The ice cream will have a soft, creamy texture. If a firmer consistency is desired, transfer the ice cream to an airtight container and place in freezer for about 2 hours. Remove from freezer for about 15 minutes before serving.

This whole process was so fun! I've never made homemade ice cream like this before. :-D

Mike and I both agreed that this ice cream was deeelicious. However, beware; it is on the rich side. A small serving was all each of us could handle! And that's better for our waist lines anyway. ;-) But we really really enjoyed it, and we've also been enjoying it a few more times since we made it last week... We tried it immediately when it was ready and still on the softer side as far as ice cream goes. I loved the texture of it at that stage!! It's also great as a hard ice cream though after it's frozen longer. Either way = a tasty, homemade treat!

My sister gave me this great ice cream cookbook pictured below for my birthday... As we speak, I have pumpkin ice cream in the works! Can't wait to try it. If it's yummy, you'll see it here on the blog ASAP. I could not wait to make something pumpkin-y!! I couldn't hold it in any longer. That can of pumpkin in the pantry just had to be used. You can bet there will be a lot more baking with pumpkin this fall!!!

:)

Chocolate Chip Zucchini Muffins

Zucchini! You may have read my last recipe on the blog for zucchini cake whoopie pies with a maple buttercream filling. Well guess what? After making those whoopie pies, I STILL had zucchini left over! This guy was big:

So what to do, what to do? Keep baking, of course! This time it was muffins. I adapted this recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks, The Best of Cooking Light, that I've had for several years now. It was a very moist, flavorful muffin. The combo of zucchini and chocolate was excellent! If you have any lingering zucchini from your garden or CSA this summer, I suggest you try these.

Ingredients:

-2 and 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

-3/4 cup sugar

-2 tsp. baking powder

-1 tsp. cinnamon

-1/2 tsp. baking soda

-1/2 tsp. salt

-1 cup finely shredded zucchini

-1/2 cup 1% milk

-1/4 cup vegetable oil

-1 large egg

-3/4 to 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin pan with liners, or grease a 8 x 4 loaf pan if you'd like to make this recipe into bread instead of muffins. Lightly spoon the flour into dry measuring cups. Combine the flour and the next six ingredients in a large bowl, and make a well in the center of the mixture. Combine the zucchini, milk, oil, and egg in a bowl, and add to the flour mixture. Stir until just combined.

Spoon batter into your muffin cups or loaf pan. For muffins, bake at 350 degrees for 12 - 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. For the loaf, bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Cool in pan for 5 to 10 minutes before removing to cool completely on cooling rack.

ENJOY!

I made two mini loaves too!

What here doesn't belong?! Haha. I made homemade pizza with zucchini as one of the toppings the night after making the muffins. :)

Have a great week, friends! By the way, my favorite season fall is almost officially here... I cannot wait for all the flavors of fall! I've been dreaming of them for a while...like since July. Okay fine, I'll be honest. I've been dreaming of fall flavors since the end of last fall. ;-)

Friday Favorites, 9.9.11

Friday is here!!!!! Woohoo. It was really nice to have a short, 4-day work week. For this week's Friday Favorites, I thought I'd share some of my new favorite additions to my kitchen! Oh, and in case you were missing Friday Favorites last week, my apologies... I was a busy gal last Friday, running 19 miles (my longest run yet!) and also just running all over doing a gazillion things (truly, a gazillion), which caused me to completely neglect the blog. Oopsies! And speaking of 19 miles, I just realized that my first marathon is one month from today! That's right. On October 9th, I'll be running (hopefully!) my first ever marathon.

K, onto some newly developed favorites...

My birthday was last month, and I received some awesome baking and cooking related items. I wonder why people give me those types of items? Hmmmm. People know me so well! 

Mike gave me this ice cream maker! I'd been saying for a while that I've wanted one, and Mike clearly picked up on that. ;-)

Last night we made our first batch...

We made peanut butter chocolate chip! Oh my. Deeelicious. It was quite rich! But oh so good. The recipe will be on the blog in the near future...

The peanut butter chip was a recipe from the Cuisinart recipe book that came with the machine, but I also received this ice cream recipe cookbook for my b'day from my sister:

And I plan to make my next flavor of homemade ice cream from this book! I've read through several recipes so far, and I'm thinking either pumpkin or cinnamon...two very fall-like flavors. Heck, maybe I'll combine them and make pumpkin cinnamon!

I also received this fabulous Martha Stewart Cupcakes cookbook. Yay!

A girl can never have too many cupcake books. Some delicious recipes I'm eyeing already in here? Snickerdoodle cupcakes, roasted banana cupcakes, and pumpkin brown butter cupcakes. If the quality of the cupcakes in this book is anything like the quality of the several cookie recipes I've made in my Martha Stewart Cookies book, then we're in for some awesome treats! 

And in my last post of zucchini cake whoopie pies with maple buttercream filling, I mentioned this great book too that I received for my b'day:

Can't wait to try more from this fun book!

And lastly, my Mom also gave me some super cute dishes that I'm sure you'll see on the blog from time to time...

How cute are these? Love 'em!

Have a wonderful weekend! We're off to our second wedding of this month! And then we'll be focusing on planning our own. :)

Zucchini Cake Whoopie Pies with Maple Buttercream Filling

Zucchini cake whoopie pies? Who thinks up such a thing? I do! What made me think of this? Well, you see, I recently received this fun whoopie pies cookbook for my birthday, and I wanted to try one of the recipes in it.

In the book, I saw a recipe for carrot cake whoopie pies that sounded awesome. However, I was in possession of this huge zucchini:

And I felt the need to bake with it! So, I decided to try substituting shredded zucchini for the carrots. Success! The zucchini cake cookies were awesome. 

Then I had to decide which type of filling to use for the whoopie pies. Some kind of cream cheese filling? Chocolate? Actually, thinking back, chocolate probably would have worked quite well with zucchini. What I settled on though was a very tasty maple buttercream filling recipe that was also from the whoopie pies cookbook. Score! A great, unique combo was born.

Ingredients:

-2 cups all-purpose flour

-1 and 1/2 tsp. baking soda

-1 tsp. baking powder

-1 tsp. ground cinnamon

-1/2 tsp. salt

-1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

-1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

-1/2 cup granulated sugar

-2 large eggs

-1 tsp. vanilla extract

-1 cup grated zucchini

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt in a medium bowl. 

In a stand mixer, beat the butter and both sugars until light and creamy, about 5 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula, then add the eggs and vanilla and beat until combined. Mix in the flour mixture until just combined, then add the zucchini. Chill the batter in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour (I chilled mine overnight because I wasn't making the cookies until the next day).

Drop about 1 to 2 tablespoons of batter at a time onto the prepared baking sheets, spacing cookies about 2 inches apart. Bake for about 15 - 20 minutes, or until the cakes spring back when pressed gently. Remove from the oven and let the cakes cool on sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack to cool completely. 

For the maple buttercream filling:

-1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

-2 cups confectioners' sugar

-1 Tbsp. milk

-2 Tbsp. pure maple syrup

In a stand mixer, beat the butter on low speed until creamy. Add the sugar, 1/2 cup at a time, with the mixer on low until incorporated. Add the milk and maple syrup, and beat on medium for 3 to 4 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl periodically.

Match up cookies of roughly the same size, top one with a generous amount of maple filling, and put the two cookies together. Bam! You've got yourself a delicious (and somewhat healthy, perhaps?? ;-)) whoopie pie. This recipe made about 36 cookies for me...so about 18 whoopie pies.

You'll want to store these cookies in the fridge, and be sure not to stack them on top of one another because they'll stick together. I put mine in tupperware containers, and each layer of whoopie pies was separated by wax paper.

The cookies were a tad flatter than I would have liked, but the flavor was great and they were very cake-like so I was still happy with them.

Hi there little green specks of zucchini! Love that you can see those.

Mmmmm, time for filling. :)

I also made zucchini chocolate chip muffins with that beautiful, huge zucchini, so hopefully that recipe will appear here on the blog soon!

Hope you all had a wonderful Labor Day weekend!

Flourless Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

I've been very excited to share this recipe for you (along with the several others patiently waiting to go on the blog!). This recipe for flourless peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies was soooo easy. And the cookies tasted soooo good. Need I say more? Didn't think so. ;-)

This recipe was adapted from Amandeleine.

Ingredients:

-1 cup peanut butter (any kind will do, I think)

-3/4 cup granulated sugar

-1 large egg, slightly beaten

-1/2 tsp. baking soda

-1/4 tsp. salt

-1 cup chocolate chunks or chips (any kind; I used semi-sweet because that's all I happened to have on hand)

-3/4 cup quick oats (this was my addition; the original recipe did not call for oatmeal)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. In a large bowl, stir the peanut butter, sugar, egg, baking soda, and salt until combined. Stir in the chocolate and oats.

Place the dough on prepared pans by the teaspoonful, placing the balls about two inches apart. Bake for about 10 to 12 minutes, or until slightly browned.

Simple (takes less than 5 minutes to mix the ingredients together!), delicious (pb & chocolate - always a winner, and the cookies were super soft and chewy), and on the healthy side as far as cookies go (oatmeal? pb? totally justified as health food)... ;-)