Fall is hands down my favorite season. I love everything about it – the weather, the clothes, the foliage, the food. But what I don’t love is the fact that it’s decided to snow twice in the last three days. Global warming? Apparently NOT.
(Luckily none of it’s sticking. If it’s going to snow this early, we better have a white Christmas.)
Anyway, half the fun of fall is all the pumpkin based food that’s suddenly out there. Like pumpkin muffins! Pumpkin bread! Pumpkin waffles! Grande soy milk pumpkin spice lattés with whipped cream (in case you needed to know). The list goes on. But my absolute favorite is pumpkin bread.
Pumpkin Muffins
(From smitten kitchen.)
Ingredients
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
15 ounces (1 can) packed pumpkin puree*
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1 tsp pumpkin-pie spice
1 1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
Directions
Preheat oven to 350°.
Combine pumpkin puree, oil, eggs, pumpkin-pie spice, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Whisk together until smooth – but don’t overmix! Mix in flour.
Plop into muffin tins. Combine 1 tbsp sugar with 1 tsp cinnamon, sprinkle over muffins. Bake for 25 – 30 minutes. (If you bake it in a bread loaf pan like I did, it takes about an hour/until a toothpick comes out cleanly.)
Enjoy!
These are so easy to make, and are all dense and moist (I hate that word) and pumpkin-y. When I made these into muffins last week, I also made cream cheese frosting (8 oz cream cheese, 1/4 cup butter, 1/2 – 3/4 cup powdered sugar, 1/2 tsp vanilla extract – mixed together) and they complemented each other really well. But I guess that turns them into cupcakes? I don’t really know the difference between muffins and cupcakes.
*Her recipe says 1 cup from a 15 ounce can – but I’ve been using the entire can and it works wonderfully.
ALSOOOO! Sugar cookies! I associate sugar cookies more with winter, but I guess it’s not really a seasonal cookie until you decide on a cookie cutter. Happy Halloween, in advance!
I’ve had this recipe for forever – I have no idea where I got it from, but it’s always worked well.
Sugar cookies
Ingredients
3 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup (softened) unsalted butter
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 – 2 tbsp milk
Directions
Preheat oven to 375°.
In one bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt.
In another bowl, cream together sugar and butter. Add in egg and milk until well mixed. Gradually add in flour mixture until combined. (Add in additional tbsp of milk if the dough is too dry.)
Halve dough, refrigerate 1 hour minimum. (I always skip this step.) Roll out dough using powdered sugar instead of flour. Use whatever cookie cutter fits your mood or the season.
Place on cookie sheet, bake for 8 – 12 minutes, or until cookies are golden brown. They don’t expand a lot, but make sure there’s space, because a lot of my ghosts ended up holding hands.
Cool two minutes on sheet, finish cooling on wire rack.
Enjoy!
p.s. Fall is my favorite season, winter is my least. I hate snow. Whenever it snows, I always wonder why I didn’t apply to schools in California. And then I remember that I’m only of the few people in the world who don’t die for California. I love Boston. Because of its seasons – as much as I complain.
