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'!

Mashed Root Vegetables (Potato, Rutabaga, Parsnip) with Rosemary

Hello hello! Sorry it's been several days between posts. Whoops! This is a tasty side dish recipe that involves very yummy, healthy root veggies that are abundant this time of year. During our last week of our CSA at the end of October, we got a rutabaga! My first ever :) I was debating what to do with it and decided it might be fun to mash it! So I did. I combined it with a parsnip and a couple potatoes...all from our CSA. I kind of just flew by the seat of my pants with this recipe, so the approximate measurements are listed below for you. I feel like this is the kind of recipe that you can make to your own taste, adding a bit more butter or milk (or whatever!) to your liking.

Ingredients:

-1 parsnip

-2 small potatoes

-1 rutabaga

-2 or so Tbsp. of butter

-salt and pepper to taste

-1/4 to 1/2 cup milk (I used 1%)

-a few sprigs of fresh rosemary

Instructions:

Peel veggies and cut into small cubes/chunks. I probably ended up with 2.5 to 3 cups of veggies (I actually only used about 2/3 of the rutabaga). Place root veggies in a large saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil; reduce heat, cover and cook for 15 - 20 minutes or until tender. Drain and return veggies to a large bowl. Add the butter, milk, salt, and pepper. Beat until light and fluffy, or mash with a masher or fork. Stir in fresh rosemary (or other herbs of your choice!).

I'm sorry I didn't take any more appetizing photos. I forgot to take any more than just these! I didn't feel like using an electric mixer to beat the root veggies, and I don't have a masher...so I just used an old-fashioned fork. That led to some lumps in mine, but I didn't mind. I actually liked the texture. ;-) I am not actually sure if I've ever had rutabaga before now! I did like it, and I'd definitely make this dish again. I roasted the remaining 1/3 of the rutabaga that I didn't put in this dish. That was tasty too!

Lesson learned here = I ♥ rutabaga. :)

Oreo Stuffed Chocolate Cupcakes with Kahlua Cream Cheese Frosting

Yes, you heard me right. Or, rather, you read my words correctly. ;-) These are OREO STUFFED chocolate cupcakes. I was inspired to try this by recently reading some recipes about making oreo stuffed chocolate chip cookies. I actually bought oreos several weeks ago with the intent to make those cookies. But then came the occasion of a coworker's birthday (which also happened to fall on Halloween!), and I thought to myself, you should really use those oreos you bought a while ago. I wanted to make cupcakes for the birthday occasion though since they're much more birthday-like than cookies. And then there it was - the idea for oreo stuffed cupcakes! As soon as I had the idea, I knew it would be a winner.

When making cupcakes on Halloween, one must use Halloween-themed liners!

The oreos I used weren't classic oreos; rather, they were these newfangled "heads or tails" oreos that have one chocolate wafer and one vanilla one. Even better - the best of both worlds!

I'll share the actual cupcake ingredients later on in the post, but first, the method of stuffing the cupcakes... It's quite simple really.

Put a spoonful of cupcake batter in the bottom of the liner. And by spoonful, I mean about a tablespoon or so?

Next, the oreo goes in!

Finally, place more cupcake batter on top of the oreo and fill until the cup is about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way filled. That's it folks!

You can easily use whatever cupcake recipe you love too (doesn't have to be the one I share below!). If you have a favorite homemade chocolate cupcake recipe you love, use it. Or, try the oreo stuffed cupcakes with vanilla or peanut butter cupcakes. Whatever you want!!

I used a new recipe from this fun book. The original recipe was just for the chocolate cupcakes. The addition of the oreos was a Barbershop twist on the original. Oh, and actually, I added the salt and vanilla to the ingredients list myself too. They weren't in the original recipe.

Ingredients:

-1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa

-1 cup hot water

-1 and 2/3 cups flour

-1 and 1/2 cups sugar

-1/2 tsp. baking soda

-1/2 tsp. salt

-1/2 cup butter, softened

-2 eggs

-1 tsp. vanilla

-20 to 24 oreos (any kind will do!)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place paper cupcake liners in muffin pan. Mix the cocoa with the hot water in a bowl until the mixture is smooth. Set aside and let the mixture cool for about 10 minutes. When it's cool, place it in a mixing bowl and add the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, butter, eggs, and vanilla. Beat on low speed for two minutes. Increase speed and beat for two additional minutes. Using the method I described above, make your oreo stuffed cupcakes and fill the cups about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way full.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove from pan and let cool completely on wire rack before frosting.

I was pretty pleased with the flavor of these cupcakes. And they were very moist! That's key for me when it comes to cupcakes.

For the frosting on these little gems, I used a recipe I previously posted about and looooved. It's this kahlua cream cheese frosting. Use any frosting you'd like though! Classic vanilla or chocolate frosting would be great with these cupcakes.

Now, because I was making these cupcakes for a Halloween birthday, I decided to decorate them in a way that fit Halloween. I made them into mummies!  The method to make mummies is very simple. And you don't have to be very precise either which is always nice. :) I used my Wilton cake decorating tip #47. Basically, to create the mummy look, just pipe lines with your pastry bag any which way you want on top of the cupcake and you've got yourself a mummy! Then place a couple candies of your choice on top for the eyes. Anyone can do it! No need for them to look perfect.

I made about a dozen mini cupcakes too! These did not have oreos in them though. :(

Here's my family of mummies, just chillin'. Little did they know the fate that was around the corner for them... Poor mummies didn't know they'd be completely devoured the next day.

The first night I made these, I taste tested one just to be sure they were worthy of being fed to my coworkers and the birthday guest of honor the next day at work. Rest assured; they were.

Below are a few more looks at the deliciousness that is the newly discovered favorite type of cupcake among my coworkers...

Cupcakes will never be the same!!

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. :)