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. ;) 

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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!

Whole Foods Pecan Recipe Contest Results!

It's the moment we've all been waiting for. Drum roll, please... And the winner of the Whole Foods contest "Your Best Recipe with Pecans" is pecan, cranberry, cinnamon chip cookies!! Yeah!

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I mentioned it briefly in my latest post, but in case you missed it, my recipe did, in fact, win the contest! I am pretty darn excited. So cool! The results were announced on Friday, January 13th, which as I had mentioned earlier last week, is a lucky day in my family in general and it's also my mom's birthday. So to me, it's even cooler that I found out my recipe won on the lucky day of January 13th!! Thank you so much to all of you who took the time to vote for my recipe online and to cheer me on. It really means a lot to me! I've had multiple friends and family let me know that they've already made the recipe or intend to make it soon. I hope everyone enjoys it! You can find the original recipe either on my blog here or on the Whole Foods Market Cooking website.

For those of you who follow my blog regularly (thank you!), you probably already know quite a bit about me. However, if you're interested in learning more random details about the "Barbershop," on the Whole Foods Market Cooking blog today, there's a little "Q & A" session about me! You can learn things I'm sure you've always been curious about...you know, like if I was reincarnated as a single dish, what would I be, or does my ideal dinner party include 2, 4 - 6, or 8+ guests? You can find the answers to those questions and more over on the Whole Foods blog!

I also wanted to thank a lovely friend and fellow blogger, Jeanne from Adirondack Baker, who wrote a blog post over the weekend about my victory in the contest. So thoughtful! Take a few minutes to look over Jeanne's blog; you won't be disappointed! She creates some amazing goodies in her kitchen. I am continually amazed by her talent in the kitchen! Some of my favorite posts are about her cake creations, like this super cute snowman cake and her grandson's treasure chest cake she made for his third birthday.

Also, I wanted to talk about cinnamon baking chips for a minute. A few friends and family have contacted me, wondering where they can buy them. Well, some Whole Foods stores may carry them, but I haven't bought them there yet. In the Boston area, I've found them at both Shaw's and Stop and Shop stores. I believe that my mom has bought them before at Hannaford in NY state. If you're unable to find them near you though, you can always resort to buying them online! Amazon actually has a decent price for the Hershey's brand cinnamon chips, which is the brand I most commonly use. Many different brands of baking chips make cinnamon-flavored ones though! They are sooo yummy. If you've never baked with cinnamon chips, you really need to give them a try!

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Lastly, a big thank you to Whole Foods for hosting such a great contest! For all you cooks, bakers, bloggers, and foodies out there, I'd recommend that you check out the various recipe contests that Whole Foods Market Cooking sponsors on a regular basis and I'd encourage you to enter one of your own recipes. I was completely surprised when I made it to the final two and even more surprised when I actually won! Overall this was a really fun, positive experience that makes me love Whole Foods even more than I did previously! I've recently begun shopping there more regularly now that we have a store in the town where I live and work; it opened last November. It's the smallest Whole Foods store in the country (at least that's the rumor I've heard!) and I love it. They even carry local pork from my super small hometown in rural upstate NY. Pretty neat!

Now, I'm pretty sure that what I'll be doing this week is heading to Whole Foods and using my winnings to buy $100 worth of ingredients to make several dozen pecan, cranberry, cinnamon chip cookies. ;) I have a lot of friends, family, and coworkers who have requested samples of these prize-winning cookies since they so nicely voted for my recipe without actually tasting them!

Thanks for listening to my ramblings here today, friends! I'll leave you with one more thought:

Found this awesome saying on Pinterest. So perfect!

:)

Whole Foods "Your Best Recipe with Pecans" Contest: I'm a Finalist!

Hey friends! So just yesterday in my post about baked parmesan tomatoes, I reminded you that today Whole Foods would be announcing the two finalists for the "Your Best Recipe with Pecans" contest, and I asked for your good luck wishes that my cookie recipe would make it... Well your good luck vibes must have worked because my pecan, cranberry, cinnamon chip cookies made it to the final two! Woohoo! I am quite excited. :)

Now I am going to so kindly ask you to please head on over to the contest website and vote for my recipe, if you don't mind! To vote, you do need to create an account, but it only takes a very quick minute, I promise. And you don't have to choose to get the Whole Foods Market Cooking newsletter if you don't want to, but I recommend that you do! The newsletters have some wonderful recipes, cooking tips, etc. 

What I love about this contest is that someone actually made the recipes that were submitted to test them out! I think that's very cool that someone physically followed my recipe in a test kitchen to see if it was worthy of becoming a finalist. You can read her impressions here too. Neato. :)

Thanks for your support, friends! You have until 12:00 p.m. ET on this Friday the 13th to vote! Yes, that's Friday the 13th. It's always been considered a lucky day in my family, so I'm hopeful! And January 13th is my mom's birthday too, so that makes it even better.

I'll be back again soon this week with a great winter recipe of a delicious baked potato soup!

Pecan, Cranberry, Cinnamon Chip Cookies

Hello blog friends and happy 2012 to you! I'm especially excited about this year since 2012 is the year I'll be getting married. :) Only 306 days to go! It'll be here before we know it...

Although our wedding is clearly on my mind, there's another very important thing on my mind at the moment. What might that be? Well, it's pecan, cranberry, cinnamon chip cookies, of course!! I made these cookies over this past weekend to share with friends on New Year's Eve, but I also made them because I wanted to submit a recipe to a Whole Foods recipe contest that was for "your best recipe for pecans." Once I taste tested one of these cookies and knew they were pretty darn yummy, my hope of submitting this recipe to the contest was confirmed. Check out my submission here. :) The entries are narrowed down to two final recipes on January 10th. Wish me luck!

Ingredients:

-6 oz. (1 and 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted

-1 cup packed light brown sugar

-1/2 cup sugar

-2 large eggs

-2 tsp. vanilla extract

-1 cup all-purpose flour

-1 cup whole wheat flour

-1/2 tsp. salt

-1/2 tsp. baking soda

-1 tsp. ground cinnamon

-1 cup chopped pecans, toasted

-3/4 dried cranberries (e.g., Ocean Spray craisins)

-3/4 cup cinnamon flavored baking chips

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place the chopped pecans on a baking sheet; toast in the 350 degree oven for 5 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove and set aside to let cool. Melt the butter in the microwave and allow it to cool slightly. Using a whisk, combine the butter and both sugars together in a large bowl. Whisk in the eggs and vanilla. In a medium bowl, sift together the whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour, salt, baking soda, and cinnamon. Add this flour mixture to the butter and egg mixture and fold until just combined. Fold in the pecans, dried cranberries, and cinnamon chips until well-incorporated, but be careful not to overmix.

Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Drop cookie dough by the tablespoonful on baking sheet, placing at least 2 inches apart. Bake for 10 - 14 minutes. When the edges are just lightly golden brown, remove from oven. Allow the cookies to cool on the sheet for a couple minutes before removing to cooling rack. Once fully cooled, the cookies can be stored in an airtight container. Makes 30 cookies.

I was very pleased with the flavor and texture of these cookies. The combination of the three ingredients - pecans, dried cranberries, and cinnamon chips - may be a new favorite flavor combination of mine! I bet this would be a yummy combo for muffins too....

 This recipe is very versatile too. You could easily use all whole wheat flour or all-purpose flour instead of half of each like I did here. And if you're not a fan of any of the ingredients, substitute away! Different flavors of baking chips, other nuts, etc. could be interchanged without a problem.

Hope everyone's 2012 is off to a great start thus far!

This post is linked up to Taste and Tell Thursdays.

Cranberry White Chocolate Cinnamon Chip Bars

Am I really back in the Barbershop so soon? Yes! I am relaxing at home with my parents and thankful that I did not have to drive back to Boston today in the BLIZZARD! I took a couple extra days off from work, and I'm very glad I did. So, as I have some extra time here relaxing, I thought I'd share another tasty treat with you. And also, guess what I just realized? This recipe is my 85th blog post!! Neat. :)

This recipe is another one of the treats I made for my coworkers over the holidays. And they're yet another super easy and delicious goodie!! I loved the process of making these bars. All you had to do was put one layer on top of another and then bake! Seriously. It was that simple. These bars were a bit on the sweet side, but if you just have a bite-sized size bar, then it's not too sweet, I promise. I loved the combination of flavors in these bars too...white chocolate, graham cracker, cranberry, coconut, cinnamon...yummmm. The recipe is from an awesome blog, Our Best Bites (I've referenced it a few times at the Barbershop already). Here's the recipe!

Okay, enough talking - onto pics!

Ingredients!

The butter needs to be melted; save a dish and just melt it in the pan in the preheating oven!

While the butter is melting, prepare the remaining ingredients like the chopped pecans.

The other ingredients, ready to go...

 Melted butter!

Sprinkle graham cracker crumbs over top, and press them down into the butter evenly.

Next up is sweetened condensed milk.

Coconut!

Cinnamon chips - LOVE these.

White chocolate chips.

Chopped pecans.

And finally, dried cranberries (I used craisins)!

Here are the bars, fresh out of the oven! They browned a bit more than I would have liked on the edges, but it didn't really affect the taste at all since they weren't actually burned.

It's important to let the bars cool completely before you cut them. I cut about 40 bars or so out of my 13 x 9 pan. I laid out these bars for my "assembly line" when I was putting together treats (30 bags worth!) for my coworkers.

You must try these bars. You just must! ;-)

See you again soon!