Pumpkin Bread

My most favorite thing about fall: PUMPKIN! Pumpkin Lattes, Pumpkin Pie, and Pumpkin Bread. I even make my 6 month old homemade pumpkin baby food. Gotta start him young on the pumpkin lovin!

Year after year I search and search for a pumpkin bread recipe. I have yet to ever find one I truly like. So this year, I decided I was done trying to find a recipe, I will make up my own. I have made plenty of loaves of banana bread, zucchini bread, and various other bread, to know the basic ingredients of a bread loaf. Now I just needed to get the right ratios and spices for the perfect pumpkin bread.

Well, SUCCESS!! The recipe makes 3 medium sized loaves, or 2 loaves and 6 muffins. Totally up to you.

Pumpkin Bread

Ingredients:
1 can of organic pumpkin 15 oz (NOT pumpkin pie filling)
4 eggs
3 cups of sugar
2/3 cup water
1 cup of oil
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon all spice
1.5 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon baking soda
3.5 cups of flour

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour each loaf pan.
2. Mix pumpkin, eggs, sugar, oil and water on medium speed in a large mixing bowl.
3. Once well mixed (soupy mixture), add cinnamon, nutmeg, all spice and salt. Mix for 1 minute on medium speed. This allows the pumpkin mixture to get the spices well worked on.
4. With the mixer on medium, add the baking soda, and the flour slowly. Continue to mix until all the flour has been added.
5. Mix on medium for 2-3 minutes. Mixture will be like a thick soup.
6. Evenly divide the batter into the loaf pans. Batter will make 3 medium sized loaves, or two loaves and 6-12 muffins.
7. Cook two loaf pans at a time at 350 degrees for 40-60 minutes. I check after 40 minutes, and about each five minutes there after. Bread should be a warm brown color, and the tooth pick should come out clean. If you are making muffins they take 12-15 minutes.
8. Immediately remove the loaf from the pan, and place on to a cooling rack.

You can share the loaves with friends, eat them all yourself, or freeze the extra loaves. Enjoy!

Halloween Cupcakes

This weekend I will be making TONS of cupcakes...when I say tons, I generally make 50-60. Not because I have any special event, or really anything to do with them, but I LOVE decorating them. LOVE LOVE LOVE it! As I have mentioned before, I LOVE SPRINKLES. Every shape, color, and size. Holidays give me an excuse to use them!! Also, my cupcake recipe, is pretty darn amazing, not to brag. One recipe my dad was great at was cakes. So I use his cake recipe and altered it to make the perfect batch of 16 cupcakes...now if you are not a person who likes to make cupcakes from scratch, get the Betty Crocker butter yellow mix. Its good (not as good, but good) and you can still decorate them!! Yay! 

Amazingly Yummy Vanilla Cupcakes

Ingredients:

1 cup  granulated sugar
1 vanilla bean
1 3/4 cups cake flour, not self-rising
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 large eggs
1/3 cup full-fat sour cream
1/4 cup vegetable oil 
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
2/3 cup whole milk

Note: You can NOT use low fat sour cream, or skim milk. These are cupcakes, they are not supposed to be "healthy" :)

Directions: 

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. In a small bowl, combine sugar and seeds from the vanilla bean. If you are unsure how to get the seeds of a vanilla bean out, check out you tube, they have some great tutorials. 
3. Mix slowly, make sure to press the seeds into the sugar to get the vanilla flavor into the sugar. 
4. Get out your kitchen aide and mix together the cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
   
5. Add the vanilla bean sugar and mix until well combined.
6. Add butter and mix on medium-low speed for three minutes.  The texture should be fine/crumbly. 
7. In a separate mixing bowl, whisk together eggs, sour cream, oil, and vanilla extract.
8. Add this mixture to the flour/butter mixture, and mix on medium until combined.
9. Slowly add milk and mix on low speed until just combined.  The batter will be liquid.  (Don't worry, you didn't do anything wrong.  It's supposed to be that way.) **
10. Fill cupcake liners just over 1/2 full. I bake then in batches of 8. (2 pans of 8). 
11. Bake for 14 minutes and then test to see if they are done. They are done when a toothpick comes out without wet batter stuck to it.  The cupcakes should appear white with specks of vanilla bean. They should not turn a golden brown.  If they are not done, test again in two minutes.  If they are still not done, test again in another two minutes. Mine are generally done in 16 minutes. 
12. When the cupcakes are done, remove them immediately from the tins and leave them on a cooling rack (or just on your counter if you don't own a cooling rack) to cool.

**For holidays I also add in 2 drops of food coloring to make them more festive. I do orange for Halloween :)

For the frosting, I always use the Wilton Buttercream Frosting Recipe found here when I am decorating. If I am just frosting to eat, I use a less sweet frosting, but it does not work as well for piping frosting. 

Decorating Ideas: 

Sprinkles!!

Food coloring (to color your frosting)

Candy corn

Red Hots

Licorice Rope (red and black)

Mini Chocolate Chips 

Milano Cookies

Writing Gel 

Candy Corn Pumpkins 

Here are some decorating ideas for Halloween Cupcakes I made last year. I will post pictures after this weekend of my new ideas too! 

Back to cooking....

With all the beautiful weather, my cooking took a bit of a dive. We were using the grill A LOT, and that is my husbands realm, so not much for me to blog about. With the colder weather finally here, and all of the holidays coming up, we are diving back in head on! This month we will be posting lots of easy crock pot recipes for those cold days, and tons and tons of Holiday Treats! From festive cupcakes....todays post...to rice crispy treats, cakes, brownies, and of course COOKIES! No holiday is complete with out cookies! Also, at Christmas time, we will feature some extra special candy recipes!


If there is any type of recipe you are looking for, just comment and let us know! We will do the best we can to help!

Bob's Chocolate Cake

So many of you are probably wondering, who is Bob? Well Bob is my friend Dani's dad. He is the only person whose cooking has ever made me feel as at home as my dad's cooking. He is a great cook, and a great person. I moved out to Boston for grad school and I always missed my dad's cooking, and most especially his cakes. The first year I lived there, my dad ordered me a Cheesecake Factory Cheesecake for my birthday to make up for the fact he couldn't make me a home made cake, it was good but it wasn't the same. Sadly, after that year, I lost my favorite cake maker, and person. I dreaded my birthday that year (for a million reasons), one being the fact I didn't think anyone could even come close to making a cake I would enjoy as much as my dad did....well I was wrong. Thanks to Dani, the best friend and roommate a girl could ask for, and thanks to her dad Bob for his fabulous recipe, I had a DELICIOUS birthday cake! It was decorated fancy with frosting (my dad was an amazing cake decorator), but it was to die for in flavor! And looked perfect without any frosting! Now that I don't live close enough to Bob to have him make it for me, and Dani moved to New Zealand, I have to make the cake myself! But it is so good, I make it quite often!

Bob's Chocolate Cake

Ingredients: 

1 box of chocolate cake mix
1 box of instant chocolate pudding
4 eggs
1 cup of milk*
1/2 cup of sour cream or yogurt*
2 1/2 - 3 cups of chocolate chip (one small bag of tollhouse semi sweet)
1 cup nuts (optional)

Powdered Sugar for dusting

*I always use sour cream, but Dani is lactose intolerant, so she used plain yogurt because it was easier on her tummy, and both cakes taste the same! So totally just your preference! You can also substitute the milk for rice, soy, or almond, just has to be unflavored!  

Directions: 

Preheat oven at 350 degrees. Spray bundt pan with cooking spray. Combine all ingredients and mix on medium speed for 2 minutes. Pour batter into bundt pan, and cook for 50 mins. Remove from oven, run a knife around the edges of the pan. Place a plate over the bundt pan, and turn upside down to remove the cake on to the plate. Lightly dust the top of the cake with powdered sugar. I often make a raspberry sauce to go with the cake as well! I  prefer to serve the cake warm! Slice and enjoy! 

Italian Lemon Chicken

I really wanted tortellini last week, but I needed some chicken to go with it to make the meal more "complete" so I figured I would look in my cabinets and see what I could come up with! I am a big fan of chicken in the crock pot, its quick, easy, and the chicken is always tender and juicy if cooked with the right amount of liquid. So here is what I came up with....

Italian Lemon Chicken

Ingredients: 

3-4 chicken breasts 

1 stick of butter 

2 packets of Italian seasoning 

Juice from 2 large lemons 

Directions: 

Place the stick of butter in the crock pot. Add Chicken to the crock pot, pour the seasoning mix over top of the chicken. Then squeeze the juice from the two lemons on top of that. Cook on low 3-4 hours. You can leave the breasts whole, or stir with a fork to shred the chicken. This was DELICIOUS!! I served it over the top of tortellini and used the sauce from the chicken as sauce for the tortellini! Sprinkle some parm cheese over the top and enjoy! YUMM! 

Mexi-Rolls

Need an appetizer to go along with your Mexican-style meal?  Or perhaps you are just looking for a new twist on an old classic: egg rolls.  Doesn't really matter why, you don't need a reason to try these delicious rolls! There is so much goodness stuffed into these rolls, they are sure to fill you up!

Ingredients:

egg roll wrappers

1-2 cups shredded chicken (or beef)

1 bag frozen corn, defrosted

1 can black beans, rinsed and drained

2 cups shredded cheese

1 can Mexican style tomatoes

1 can chopped green chilies

1/2-1 cup onion, chopped

a few dashes of chili powder, depending on how spicy you want them to be

1/2 t salt

Wrapper 'glue': 1T flour mixed with 2-3T warm water

Directions:

Mix all ingredients (except wrappers) in a large bowl.  Spoon about 2-3T of the mixture on the middle of one wrapper.  Fold the bottom corner over the mixture.  Using your finger, rub some 'glue' on the remaining 2 sides of the wrapper.  Fold each side in and roll it up to seal.  Place Mexi-Rolls on a greased cookie sheet.  Bake at 425 degrees for about 15 minutes, turning half-way through.  Broil for 1-3 minutes to get them a bit crispy, if desired.  Serve warm with your favorite salsa, guacamole, or other dipping sauce. This recipe makes about 30 Mexi-Rolls.

BBQ Chicken Salad

I recently discovered the BBQ Chicken Salad, which combines some of my favorite foods. This may not be a new salad to most people, but it's a new one for me.  And it has quickly turned into one of my new favorites, perfect for summer! It's so easy and versatile, and most of it can be prepared ahead of time. Even my husband loved it, and he's not a fan of salads as the main part of a meal. It was even perfect for my girls because they could pick out what they liked (chicken, tomatoes, cheese, etc) and leave what they didn't (lettuce).

Ingredients:

Lettuce/Salad mix (I used Romaine and Iceburg mixes)

Shredded cheese

Tomatoes, chopped

Avocado, sliced

Green onions, diced

Corn, cooked & cooled

Black beans, rinsed and drained

Chicken, grilled and sliced

BBQ sauce

Ranch dressing

Directions:

Mix all ingredients in a bowl.  Top with a few drizzles of BBQ sauce and Ranch dressing.  Enjoy! Yep, it's really that easy  :)