Pumpkin Muffins Take 5: Almost Perfect

I say almost, because I'm sure they could be better, but these are spectacular. They're moist, fluffy and tender, with a great balance between pumpkin and spice. Everything you could ever want in a pumpkin muffin! And they've come a long way since the first round of pumpkin muffins!

I made these by adapting a banana bread recipe, and substituting pumpkin for banana. They ended up a bit too wet the first time I made them, so I increased the rest of the ingredients and used a second egg in place of more milk. I liked the banana bread recipe because it used so much banana, but still used a bit of butter to give it just enough fat and richness.

Post about banana bread is coming soon (it's the best I've ever tasted!) but for now, you'll have to live with pumpkin muffins. How awful.

----- ----- -----
Pumpkin Muffins Take 5
makes 18 large muffins

A Breakfast Treat

If you happen to have cinnamon swirl bread on hand, this is a great way to get rid of bananas. (You shouldn't need help getting rid of your cinnamon swirl bread.) It's also a great way to surprise a sleepy cinnamon-loving man in bed.

----- ----- -----
Broiled Bananas on Toast

Equipment:
Baking tray
Broiler
Knife
Tongs OR heat-proof finger skin

Ingredients:
slices of cinnamon swirl bread
banana (sliced lengthwise)
cinnamon sugar

Pots de Creme

A few minutes after I asked D what he wanted for dinner, I found myself clicking on the first post on Tastespotting--pots de creme from Lick My Spoon.

I had everything on hand, so I made them. As with every other food blogger, I made my own substitutions (otherwise why would I bother posting again--I could just direct you to her post!).

First, I used peppermint tea (with loose peppermint leaves) instead of coffee. I brewed it strong, but you could hardly taste the mint. I think it needed mint extract!

Second, I used extra bittersweet chocolate, because it's what I had on hand. Next time I'd made it with semisweet. D found it a little bit too bitter for his tastes, although I thought it was delightful.

In other news, I started my culinary school application today!

----- ------ -----
Chocolate Pots de Creme
makes 4 servings

Equipment
hot beverage maker (tea kettle, microwave, coffee maker, etc)
blender (see Notes if you don't have a blender!)

Ingredients
6 oz. semisweet chocolate chips (about 1 cup)
2 eggs
1t vanilla extract (or mint extract)
0.5t salt
4oz. very hot peppermint tea, brewed very strong (0.5c, although beware it evaporates fast, so brew a little bit extra)

Cinnamon Swirl Bread/Homemade Bagels

Cinnamon Swirl Bread with the Bread Baker's Apprentice open in the background.

I've been slowly working on baking my way through Peter Reinhardt's Bread Baker's Apprentice. I definitely haven't been going in order, nor have I made much progress, but the recipes I have made have been delicious.

Since Valentine's day is coming up, I decided I better make some of D's favorite foods. I'd say his two favorite ingredients are probably garlic and cinnamon, so I decided to make one goodie with each.

He recently bought me two brand spanking new loaf pans, so those were obviously going to factor into the equation. Since cinnamon + loaf pan = cinnamon bread, I knew exactly where to start. I don't want to reprint the recipe, because you should really check out the book but here are the basics:
1. Make a lightly enriched white bread dough (some eggs, sugar, fat, etc. but not a lot), with about a teaspoon of cinnamon in the dough. (Too much cinnamon will slow down the yeast. Don't worry, there's plenty more in this recipe.) Knead in chopped nuts in the last two minutes if you want. (Reinhardt's recipe calls for raisins, but really, who likes raisins???)
2. To form the loaf, roll the dough into a rectangle a few inches narrower than your loaf pans and fairly long (12-16 inches long). Sprinkle the topside with cinnamon sugar and then roll the dough tightly, pinching the end shut to create a seal.
3. Bake as instructed. When the loaves come out of the oven, brush the tops with about 1T melted butter per 2 loaves, and sprinkle with any leftover cinnamon sugar to make a nice delicious crust.

That's an awesome bread knife in the foreground. I'll post on knives soon.

Yum!! We finished about a third of a loaf as an evening snack.

Yes, all of those slices (and more) went into our belly immediately after this photo was taken.

Next task: garlic.

Lots of Training and Whole Wheat Apple Pastries

We're starting to transition into shorter pieces in preparation for the spring season. We've spent the fall and winter working mostly on our aerobic base, doing 80+ minutes of low heart rate work on a regular basis, with a few shorter (~45 minutes total work) stints at faster paces.

Our training now is phasing into 20 minutes or less of total work at much faster paces. It's really fun to see all our hard work translate into the faster pieces, without ever training these speeds.

We've also been lifting a lot. If you've never lifted before, it's time to start! Look out for an upcoming post on lifting basics.

I've been an athlete for most of my life, but I remember for most of it feel very out of shape. I got tired walking to the tops of stairs, couldn't run very far (or very fast) and just generally wasn't very energetic. This year that totally changed. I'm sure losing weight has helped, but we're also doing some incredible training this year.

We bought a bunch of apples from the 'soup bin' at our local grocery store, and have been collecting apples from the dining halls as well. I had originally intended to make my one bowl muffins (I have a post waiting, it just needs some good pictures.. they always seem to disappear before I can take pictures).

I then quickly remembered that I was trying to branch out and try new, different things. Quick breads and muffins are fairly straightforward, as are cakes and cupcakes. Instead, I thought I'd try pastries. I tried to make mini pumpkin pies with homemade crust over winter break and was sorely disappointed. I figured I'd give it another go.

I'd been wanting to try poptarts for a while, so I found a recipe. I also have an excess of whole wheat flour right now, that needs to be used ASAP. (Did you know that whole wheat flour goes rancid quickly?) I decided to sub whole wheat for the all-purpose flour and see what happened.

They were crumbly, not flaky, and the whole wheat gave these a great nutty flavor that went well with the apples.

----- ----- -----
Whole Wheat Apple Pastries
makes 6-8 small pastries

Ingredients
Filling:
1 tart apple, peeled, cored and chopped into small pieces
0.25c brown sugar
1T cinnamon
0.5t ground ginger (optional)

Crust:
1.25c whole wheat flour
1 stick (0.5c) butter, cold, cut into small cubes
2T really cold water
1T sugar
0.5t salt

Pumpkin Pecan Pie: Further from Tradition

OK, so the pumpkin pie + graham cracker crust was definitely a step up from standard pie crust... but we've made it even better! The biggest complaint from the peanut gallery was a lack of crust crispness on day two. Of course, I knew this meant we needed something that wouldn't absorb any of the liquid from the pie.

Nuts were the perfect solution. The update is just to the crust, but I've included the filling recipe again. You're welcome to use your own pumpkin pie filling, but this one is pretty spectacular! It's got a lot less liquid than most pie recipes, so the spices stay well incorporated and the pumpkin flavor shines.

-----
Graham Cracker Pecan Crusted Pumpkin Pie
makes 1 9-inch pie crust

Pumpkin Pie: a Break from Tradition

As shocking as this may be, I didn't have more than a taste of pumpkin pie until last year, and the few times I tried it, I didn't like it. Then last year, one of my hallmates requested that I baked some pie, so I decided to try my hand at apple pie and pumpkin pie.

Not knowing any better, and wanting to minimize the chance of disaster, I bought crusts. Little did I know, this was my greatest stroke of genius. While I bought a standard pie crust for the apple pie, I decided to buy a graham cracker crust for the pumpkin pie. Delicious!!! I know it's a break from tradition, but if you've ever been even slightly dissatisfied with the crust of a pumpkin pie you should try it.

Included below is the recipe for the crust and filling. Of course, you could buy the crust, but why would you when it's so easy to make???

I would love to have more pictures, but half of the pie disappeared before we could take any pictures... and the rest disappeared within 24 hours of its emergence from the oven.

Delicious pumpkin pie!

Pecan Cinnamon Rolls

We bought Panera bagels recently and they always come with too much cream cheese. What do you do with extra cream cheese? Make cream cheese frosting of course. What goes well with cream cheese frosting? Cinnamon rolls!!!

Well, as it turns out, these cinnamon rolls are so good that they don't need any frosting. (Good thing, because we don't have any powdered sugar.)

Any suggestions on using up extra cream cheese?

One cinnamon roll didn't fit, so we baked it in its own ramekin.

-----
Pecan Cinnamon Rolls
makes 30 small rolls
adapted from For the Love of Cooking

Pumpkin Muffins: Take Three

A few weeks ago, I did a comparison of my original pumpkin muffin recipe and a new, low fat version. The low fat version blew the original recipe out of the water.. so much so that even if you were trying to gain weight, I'd recommend putting butter on the low fat version instead of eating the original.

The new recipe still wasn't perfect, though. It wasn't as tender as I'd like them, and still needed a little bit more oomph. In this iteration on the recipe, I've fixed the tenderness. I still need something to make the flavor out of this world amazing, but I think I trip to get more spices will help. (Right now I've only got cinnamon and nutmeg; I think I need some ginger.)

The changes: I replaced the white sugar with brown sugar; I added back in one more whole egg, replacing two egg whites; I used milk instead of carrots; and I decreased the baking time.

What I'd do next time: Use milk and carrots, but increase the amount of flour by .25 cup to compensate; bake at a lower temp for longer; add ginger to the spices.

Just tuning in? Check out the rest of the pumpkin muffin saga, including more recent recipes!

-----
Pumpkin Muffins
12 muffins