Pumpkin Banana Bread

I have a pumpkin bread recipe that I really like but sharing a regular old pumpkin bread recipe would be boring and I'm not in the business of boring you... at least not intentionally.  Therefore, when I saw this hybrid recipe I figured it would be a different take on the classic.  Plus I like banana bread and pumpkin bread so combining the two together should be great right?

The bread is made by mixing together ripe bananas, pumpkin puree and sugar together.  Then eggs and oil are added, followed by the dry ingredients... flour, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves and salt.

The original recipe says that it will make three loaves of bread.  I cut it in half and then decided to put it all into one loaf pan (which is typically a recipe for me making a huge mess of overflowing batter all over the bottom of my oven).  Much to my surprise the bread didn't rise all that much so there was no catastrophe to report.  Sorry to disappoint you, but it does lead me to question what size pan this person refers to a "regular-sized".

The one addition I made to the original recipe was to sprinkle some pumpkin seeds on top.  Aside from the fact that I bought a giant bag of pumpkin seeds when I made bran muffins, I thought they'd add a little crunch and additional pumpkin element to the bread.

This bread is very good but it tastes like banana bread.  Likely because there's twice a much banana in here than pumpkin (2 bananas to 1/2 cup of pumpkin puree) and pumpkin has a pretty mild flavor to begin with.  This being pumpkin week, I wanted more pumpkin flavor. 

Apart from the lack of pumpkin flavor, I was a fan... it is very moist and I liked the crunch that the pumpkin seeds added on top.

CA liked it too but he agrees it is too bananay to be called anything other than banana bread.  Oh well, I guess it wouldn't be real life if every one of the ten pumpkin recipes of pumpkin week(s) were big time winners.

Pumpkin Banana Bread
adapted from Stick To Your Hips

Ingredients
2 1/2 cups Flour
2 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Cinnamon
1/4 tsp Ground Cloves
1/4 tsp Salt
2 Ripe Bananas, mashed
1/2 cup Pumpkin Puree
3/4 cups Sugar
1 Egg
1 Egg White
1/2 cup Vegetable Oil
2 T Pumpkin Seeds

Instructions
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.  Coat a loaf pan with cooking spray.

In a medium bowl combine the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves and salt.  Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix the bananas, pumpkin and sugar on medium speed until well combined.  Add the eggs and oil and mix on low speed until just combined.  Add in the flour mixture and mix on low speed until just combined.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan.  Top with pumpkin seeds (if using) and bake for 45-50 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Cool completely before removing from the pan.


Enjoy!
Julie

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls

Bakerella posted the recipe for these pumpkin cinnamon rolls less than a month ago but it was pretty clear that these needed to be added to the pumpkin week agenda STAT.  Before seeing this recipe, I was going to try pumpkin doughnuts but CA voted for cinnamon rolls and it was a good decision all around.

I made a few modifications to the recipe to based on personal preference and to make it easier for me to have fresh cinnamon rolls at a fairly reasonable breakfast time.

The main change I made was to make the dough the day before and then let it rise in the refrigerator overnight.  This worked perfectly for me.

This dough recipe is excellent!  Flour, sugar, pumpkin pie spices, and salt are mixed together with butter, milk, yeast, egg and pumpkin puree.  All that gets to rise for a few hours (or overnight in my case)  It's pretty darn delicious.



I didn't actually have pumpkin pie spice mix but I found a recipe for it that says to substitute 3 parts cinnamon to 1 part each of nutmeg, allspice and ginger.  Because this recipe calls for 2 tsp of pumpkin pie spice I put in 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/3 tsp nutmeg, 1/3 tsp allspice and 1/3 tsp ginger.  It worked perfectly and I didn't have to buy yet another spice mix to put in my cupboard.  Another good decision.

I woke up in the morning to perfectly risen dough and get started on filling, rolling and baking...

The dough gets rolled out and filled with brown sugar, white sugar, pecans and cinnamon.  It's an amazing mixture and very classic cinnamon roll (if you like nuts in your cinnamon rolls which I'm firmly in favor of).

I cut back on the amount of butter and sugar in the filling.  This is a very unusual for me and it had nothing to do with me wanting them to be healthier (it's a cinnamon roll, it's supposed to be a sugar bomb!).  The reason I cut back was that I honestly couldn't find anywhere to put all that stuff.  The dough was so well coated with roughly half the amount that I just stopped.  I did however put all the nuts in there.  More good decisions.

All that goodness gets rolled up as tightly as possible inside the dough and sliced into individual portions.  I didn't do a great job rolling these very tightly, or slicing them, or lifting them from the counter into the pan without making a giant mess so my rolls weren't perfectly rolled by the time they made it to their final baking place. 

Who cares?  They were still beautiful and delicious and filled with sugar and nuts and cinnamon.

After getting the rolls settled, they rise for about 30 minutes before getting baked up (mine hardly rose at all, again, who cares?  It didn't affect the end product as far as I can tell).

My third and fourth recipe modifications came with the icing. 

The original recipe calls for maple flavoring which I don't have (and I'm not even sure what is it) so I substituted maple syrup.  It worked great.

Then I had a flash of brilliance and decided to add dark rum to the icing.  Best decision ever.

These cinnamon rolls are freakin' delicious - I love them.  CA really loved them and ate them long past when I thought that eating the leftovers was safe.  I have a 3 day rule on leftovers and he has a 2 week rule.

Before you worry about why we had leftovers and conclude that it's because these aren't amazing, notice that I made a full 9x13 dish of cinnamon rolls for 2 people.  We gave a few away to coworkers but kept a lot of them at CA's insistence so you should not take the existence of week-long leftovers to be any indication as to the deliciousness of this recipe.  It's great.  The dough is soft and pumpkiny and yeasty.  The filling is sweet and nutty.  The icing is deliciousy and mapley and rummy.  Just plain good.

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls with Maple Rum Icing
Adapted from Bakerella

Ingredients

For the Dough
4 cups Flour
1/4 cup Sugar
1/2 tsp Salt
2 tsp Pumpkin Pie Spice (3:1:1:1 mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and allspice)
4 T Butter
1 cup Whole Milk
2 1/4 tsp (1 packet) Active Dry Yeast
1 Egg
3/4 cups Pumpkin Puree

For the Filling
1/2 cup Butter, melted and divided
1 1/2 T Cinnamon
1/3 cup Brown Sugar, packed
1/4 cup Granulated Sugar
1 cup Pecans, toasted and coarsely chopped

For the Icing
2 cups Powdered Sugar
2 T Butter
1 T Maple Syrup
1 T Dark Rum
2 T Whole Milk

Instructions
Combine flour, sugar, salt and spices with a wire whisk in a medium bowl. Transfer 3 cups of the flour mixture to the bowl of your stand mixer and set the remaining 1 cup aside.

Heat butter and milk in the microwave until the butter is melted and set aside until warm. Sprinkle yeast on the surface of the warm milk/butter mixture and let rest for about 5 minutes. Then gently stir together and add to the flour mixture. Mix on low using the paddle attachment until combined. Add egg and mix until combined and then add pumpkin and mix until combined.

Change to the dough hook and add the remaining one cup flour and knead on low speed for about 10 minutes.

Spray a medium bowl with non-stick spray. Then remove dough from mixing bowl. Knead a couple of times, shape into a ball and place in coated bowl. Turn over to coat both sides. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm spot for 2 hours until it doubles in size or in the refrigerator overnight.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  Butter or spray a 9 X 13 baking dish.

Turn out dough onto a well floured work surface and roll into a roughly 12 X 18 inch rectangle until it's about 1/4 inch thick.  Place the dough so that the long side is facing you.

Spread 6 T of the melted butter on the dough, reserving the additional 2 T. Then sprinkle cinnamon, sugar, brown sugar and chopped pecans until the dough is covered.

Start with the long side farthest from you and start rolling the dough toward you to form a log. Roll tightly and shape as you go if necessary. Then turn the dough log seam side down and cut into 15-18 equal sections using a serrated knife.

Place on prepared baking dish, brush with the remaining 2 T of melted butter and let rise again in a warm spot for about 30 minutes before baking. Bake for 25-30 minutes until the rolls are set in the center the tops are golden brown.

While the rolls are baking, make the icing.  Heat the butter over medium heat until it melts and turns golden brown. Watch closely so it does not burn.  Add the powdered sugar and whisk until combined.  Whisk in the maple syrup, rum and milk until completely smooth.

Remove rolls and spread icing over cinnamon rolls while still warm.

Enjoy!
Julie

Pumpkin Cheese Puffs

I think it's funny that you all believed that pumpkin week would only last one week.  We obviously aren't well acquainted.

The pumpkin recipes that I've made many times before (pumpkin snickerdoodles, pumpkin chili and pumpkin biscuits) took up the majority of the first week which only left time for me to try 2 new pumpkin recipes and that simply wasn't acceptable.  Therefore, pumpkin week continues...

Today's pumpkin recipe is the last savory recipe in the pumpkin series - it's all sweets from here on out.  I chose these pumpkin cheese puffs because I definitely wanted another savory option to share on the blog and CA is partial to all things cheese.

I've made cheese puffs before and the process is like making pate a choux (in fact there is a cheese puff recipe in the pate a choux chapter of the Bouchon Bakery cookbook that I still need to get to).  Pate a choux is used to make cream puffs and eclairs and these delicious peanut butter concoctions. 

These cheese puffs are made by cooking milk, butter, salt and flour together and then whipping in a bunch of eggs (standard puff stuff).  Then you add the goodies...  pureed pumpkin, cheese and maple syrup.  I was worried the syrup would make them sweet which would defeat the entire purpose of my sharing a savory recipe with you, but it was just a couple of tablespoons which didn't add sweetness so much as a rich flavor... because cheese and eggs and flour isn't rich enough.

The mixture gets piped onto a baking sheet and topped with a little more cheese and some crispy proscuitto.  Whatever you do, don't skip the proscuitto - the addition of that salty element is absolutely perfect!

Once baked these puff up due to all the moisture in the dough that creates steam inside the pastry.  I wish they had been a little bit more puffy - but that's just me being picky.



























I really enjoyed these puffs and so did CA.  We had them as an appetizer before dinner and I don't remember what we ate for dinner... all I remember are the puffs.  That must mean they're good.  They are light and cheesy and salty which is all you can ask for.  I'm not entirely sure that I can taste the pumpkin in these but I do think it gave them a nice color.

Pumpkin Cheese Puffs
from Go Bold With Butter
Makes 40-45 puffs

Ingredients
1 cup Whole Milk
1/2 cup Butter
1/2 tsp Salt
1 cup Flour
6 Eggs (divided)
1/2 cup Pumpkin Puree
2 T Maple Syrup
1 cup + 2 T shredded Gruyere or Swiss Cheese
2 T Water
4 slices Proscuitto, chopped and cooked until crispy
 Instructions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In a medium saucepan, bring milk and butter to a boil. Add the salt and flour, reduce heat to low and cook for another 2 minutes, stirring constantly, or until the edges of the dough pull away from the sides of the pan.

Remove the mixture from the pan and add it to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment.  Add 5 of the eggs, one at a time, mixing well before adding the next egg. Add pumpkin, maple syrup and 1 cup cheese and mix to combine.

Put mixture in a piping bag or a gallon sized ziploc bag.  Snip the tip of the bag by ½ inch.  On a large baking sheet lined with a silpat or parchment paper, pipe the mixture into rows of balls about ¾ inch high and about 1 ½ inches apart.

Make an egg wash with remaining egg and 2 tablespoons water, whisking to combine. Brush the tops with egg wash and garnish with remaining cheese and crispy prosciutto.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until lightly browned on top.


Enjoy!
Julie

Pumpkin Walnut Cupcakes with Nutella Frosting

I realize that yesterday I told you that pumpkin and butterscotch were best friends. I lied.

I take that back - I didn't lie, I just didn't know yet how amazing pumpkin and Nutella are together.

However, these cupcakes are not all about the frosting - the pumpkin cake base is pretty darn good too!  It contains what you would expect... pumpkin puree, vegetable oil, eggs, spices, brown and white sugar and flour.  It also contains sour cream - which I'm a big fan of in cakes because I think it helps lighten the cake and the sourness enhances all the other flavors.  (My favorite pumpkin and banana bread recipes both contain sour cream).  Another bonus ingredient is chopped walnuts - I thought long and hard about whether to leave these out (and you totally can if you want to) because I wanted it to be like cake and not like pumpkin bread but I opted to leave them in... mostly because I already had them in the house.  In the end, I liked the nuts in there - especially paired with the nutty Nutella flavor.

The original recipe calls for making a big cake out of this batter, but I opted for cupcakes for easing sharing.  In fact, I made regular and mini sized cupcakes because I ran out of regular size cupcake liners.  They both came out great and baked up nice and fluffy!

Now let's talk about the frosting because you can't have cupcakes without frosting... those are muffins.

This frosting is interesting in that there is no butter in it.  Weird right?  In fact this entire recipe doesn't have butter in it which is quite unusual for any of my dessert recipes.  This frosting is mostly Nutella with some sour cream and powdered sugar mixed in.  You then add a little bit of milk to thin it out just enough to spread it on the cupcakes.

What I loved about this frosting (aside from the fact that it tastes like Nutella) was that it held up really well.  It didn't wilt or get too soft when it sat at room temperature.

Luckily, I made a little bit too much frosting and have been spreading it on graham crackers.  I recommend it.

Together the light and fluffy pumpkin cake and the rich Nutella frosting are a perfect pair.  I'm beginning to think that pumpkin is not meant to be monogamous.

Pumpkin Walnut Cupcakes (or cake) with Nutella Frosting
adapted from The View from Great Island
Makes 1 9" cake or 18 cupcakes

Ingredients

For the Cake
1 cup Pumpkin Puree
1/2 cup Vegetable or Canola Oil
2 Eggs
1/2 cup Sour Cream
1/4 tsp Cinnamon (you could also substitute all 4 spices for 1 tsp of Pumpkin Pie Spice)
1/4 tsp Nutmeg
1/4 tsp Allspice
1/4 tsp Cardamom
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1/2 cup White Sugar
2 cups Flour
1 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 tsp Salt
1 cup Chopped Walnuts (optional)

For the Frosting
1 cup Nutella
1/4 cup Sour Cream
1 1/3 cup Powdered Sugar
Milk to thin it out (I used 2 T)

Instructions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Line a muffin tin with cupcakes liners or lightly grease a 9" spring form pan.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk the pumpkin, oil, eggs, sour cream, sugars and spices. Make sure everything is well combined.

In a separate small bowl whisk together the flour, soda and salt.

Fold the dry ingredients into the wet, mixing just until combined. Fold in the walnuts.

Scoop the batter into the prepared muffin tin or greased pan.  For cupcakes, bake for 25-28 minutes until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out without wet batter clinging to it. (Mini muffins bake for 20 minutes; the 9" cake bakes for 50 minutes). Cool briefly before removing from the pan.

Make the frosting by mixing together the Nutella, sour cream and powdered sugar. Add just enough milk or cream for a spreadable consistency. Add a little more sugar if the frosting seems too thin. Spread on the completely cooled cake.

Enjoy!
Julie

Pumpkin Scotchies

I did not expect to like these cookies as much as I did.  In preparation for Pumpkin Week, (apart from a few of my old favorite pumpkin recipes) I've been pinning pumpkin recipes like mad and then I read them aloud to CA and if he reacts favorably, I put it on the list.  When I told him that one of the options was pumpkin butterscotch oatmeal cookies, he said "I really like butterscotch" -- a fact I was completely unaware of until this moment.  I've made cookies with butterscotch in them before but I don't recall any sort of positive butterscotch reaction back then.  I swear that even after being married for 10 years he often says things I never would expect. 

All that said, I made these cookies because CA said he likes butterscotch.

This recipe is quite simple - beat the wet stuff together (butter, sugar, eggs, pumpkin vanilla) and then mix in the dry stuff (flour, baking soda, salt, spice), add the oatmeal and then the butterscotch chips.

I just realized that I'm not entirely sure what butterscotch actually is - even though I eat it and I like it.  Wikipedia tells me its basically soft toffee.  No wonder I like it.

The finished dough is pretty sticky so a cookie scoop is particularly helpful in getting these from the bowl to the pan.

I've never paired butterscotch and pumpkin together before.  I've always stuck with traditional pairings like cinnamon and nutmeg - but let me tell you that pumpkin and butterscotch are secret lovers.  They are really quite amazing together!

I have one small complaint with these cookies and that is that they get really soft after they sit around for an hour or so.  Eating them right out of the oven would be my preference but that's not always practical.  You could add more flour or oats but I suggest just baking them longer to try and dry them out (there's a lot of moisture in pumpkin).  Other than that, these are pretty freaking delicious cookies - straight out of the oven they may even rival the pumpkin snickerdoodles for favorite pumpkin cookie.. and that's saying something.

The recipe can be found on The Girl Who Ate Everything.  I recommend baking them for 13-15 minutes.

Enjoy!
Julie

Pumpkin Biscuits

I couldn't have pumpkin chili without some type of bread product on the side.  My typical chili pairing is cornbread.  I love cornbread and I briefly thought about making pumpkin cornbread (I still have every intention of making it soon) but I wasn't craving cornbread - I was craving biscuits.  Because it's pumpkin week, regular biscuits wouldn't do, I had to make pumpkin biscuits.

I've actually made this recipe before and because the chili I made was a light recipe, I didn't want to blow the whole healthy dinner vibe by making full fat biscuits so I made these lighter pumpkin spice biscuits.

Pumpkin is actually a really good substitute for butter and oil in baked goods.  Most of the time you can substitute half of it with pumpkin or mashed bananas or applesauce to lighten up the recipe.  It won't be exactly the same as the original, but it will be close enough to satisfy your craving.

These biscuits have a mixture of white and whole wheat flour which adds great texture to the biscuit.  The moisture comes from a little butter, applesauce, pumpkin and buttermilk.  I love buttermilk in my biscuits!  There is a little brown sugar and honey in these biscuits - but they are not sweet.  They are still savory which means they're biscuits not scones.

Because of the relatively small amount of butter and the pumpkin and applesauce in the dough it is very soft and sticky so it's a bit hard to cut into circles.  I imagine these would turn out just as well if you dropped them on the cookie sheet instead of cutting them out.

These little guys are pretty darn tasty and an excellent accompaniment to the turkey pumpkin chili I ate them with.  If you've ever had a sweet potato biscuit, they're similar to that - they're got the texture of a biscuit with just a hint of sweetness from the pumpkin.

I'm pretty sure that I liked them better than CA did - I went back for seconds and thirds but he refrained and no matter how many times he says he likes something, if he really loves it he'll eat more than one.

The recipe for these biscuits can be found at The Realistic Nutritionist.  I followed it exactly.

The sweeter side of pumpkin returns tomorrow.

Enjoy!
Julie

Turkey Pumpkin Chili

Day 2 of Pumpkin Week is dedicated to how versatile pumpkin is.  I love the fact that you can use pumpkin for savory dishes as well as sweet treats.

It's starting to get cooler around here and right when the weather starts to turn I always want to make chili.  This is not your traditional chili and not just because it has pumpkin in it (I just realized I need to share my mom's sweet chili with you - it's pretty delicious too!).  It's more like a white chili because it doesn't have any tomatoes in it.

This is a crock pot recipe (although you could cook it on the stove as well if you're not in a slow cooker mood).  I generally get irritated with slow cooker recipes that have you cook the food before you put it in the crock pot (what's the point of using the crock pot if you have to dirty another pan?) but I give this one a pass.

The night before I intended to eat this chili, I browned the ground turkey and sauteed the onions and spices (I may have snuck in a jalapeno as well to spice things up a bit more).  I put the turkey and onions along with all the other ingredients (pumpkin, white beans, chilis, chicken stock, etc.) into the crock pot and then stuck the whole thing in the refrigerator.  When I got up the next morning all I had to do was take it out of the fridge and plug it in.  I find that assembling everything the night before makes the whole crock pot dinner thing easier to handle before I've had a cup of coffee.  I don't much of anything before coffee.

When I got home from work the house smelled really great and the dog was already licking his chops (poor Sconnie had been tormented by the chili smell all day long and he never got to eat any of it).  Unfortunately when I opened the lid of the crock pot the chili didn't look so good.  I was frightened but pulled myself together enough to stir the pot and add a little more water and while the chili still looks like dog food at least it doesn't look dry and burned.

Despite the chili's less than stellar appearance, it tastes great!  It was warm and comforting, just what I needed on a cool night.  The bonus is that this is a pretty healthy recipe.  It turns out that pumpkin is really good for you until you mix it with two sticks of butter and a cup of sugar.  Who knew?

This recipe can be found on Skinnytaste.  The only change I made was to saute a diced jalapeno with the onions.

Enjoy!
Julie