Chestnuts Roasting...

In my toaster oven...

It's been that time of year: the time to cook, bake, eat, sleep, stress, laugh, and generally stare out the window to watch cold air blow upon the carefully hung Christmas lights, now is terrible but beautiful disarray. I love Christmas time and the holidays and I can't say I feel any rush to go back to school.

I've been baking and cooking like mad but just too busy or conversely relaxed to bother blogging any of it. Sorry!

But here are some of my less recent creations. Yesterday I did whip up a cornmeal brioche from The Bread Bible - slightly too dense but wonderful toasting bread, as I had intended it to be - and perhaps the best whole wheat sandwich loaf I've ever made. Not to pat my own back - I'm much too busy holding that two-fisted sammy.

I also experimented with making Seitan and a good stand in for mac and cheese from Healthy Happy Vegan Life that actually really hit the spot, tossed with some Green Beans, Chard, and Zucchini.

Cookies and Sourdough galore, below are the few actual pictures I did take - sorry! I'll pick up better blogging later into the new year. Only so much time for so many resolutions at once.

Apple-Pear Gingerbread Upside-down Cake

A great end to a wonderful Hanukkah dinner with friends

I even made un petit gâteau for home use...Pumpkin Sherry Quick Bread

Great for, well any time... The Brandy I subbed does bake off but really brings out the spices. Thank you again Bread Bible!

Batch two and just as good as the original!

There was, by the way, Chestnut stuffing on the Christmas table, but here's my contribution to that meal. I did bake up some Challah from a wonderful recipe I'll have to share once I get it down. Here, however was my personal pride and joy:

Pumpkin-Chocolate Yule

The Snowflakes and green sugar were just right considering I forgot the marzipan Fungi...

The Recipe came from inspiration off of Joy the Baker. The sponge cake itself was a rich pumpkin, the filling a Neufchatel-unsweetened chocolate mixture, sweetened with a bit of Agave Nectar. The frosting is a rich Chocolate-Pumpkin butter-cream of simple softened butter, heaping tablespoons (2) of cocoa powder, a splash of soy milk, powdered sugar, and a few tablespoons of pumpkin butter.

Never has a dessert been so rich. It was enjoyed if not to blame for a worse case of Tryptophan-Coma than is commonly witnessed.

Enjoi! I promise I'll bring some more soon!

Mishaps...

They happen. Wednesday my faithful old Kitchen Aid Mixer finally jumped ship when it tumbled from my counter into my waiting hands' ceramic dishes. Needless to say my bread dough was done for, a mixer was in the cards, and I need to look for some replacement vintage Corningware...

Ah well - It was just one of those days.

Thanksgiving day was much more enjoyable!

Anyways, to break in the fruits of this Black Friday - a Kitchen Aid Pro 520 which completely blows me away - I whipped some Spicy Pumpkin bread based on the recipe from The Bread Bible. My goodness, I very much enjoy that book. The whole-grain wild rice-molasses bread I was making and (with much help) remade sans-mixer too came from its glorious pages.

Also a wonderful bread...Sweet, Chewy...

Anyhow, the Pumpkin-Cream Cherry bread came out wonderfully. I added orange zest and a bit of oatmeal as well as a splash of almond extract to make up for the lack of Sherry in my inventory.

It was spice, moist (Thanks to the addition of some plain yogurt to offset the volume of oil called for) and rose very well.

There's no substitute for careful mixing in chemically leavened quick-breads, I always say. I really do, it's a bad habit.

Anyways here it is - if you're ever in the market for a nice spiced quick bread, hit this recipe up. There's never enough Pumpkin in the pie alone this time of year.

One loaf...

Two Bundts...

And a whole-lot of sweet-scented holiday baking...

Enjoy the start to the holiday season! I'm already hitting the Christmas music pretty hard...

November Comes!

I love this month. It's the start of Scorpio season for us Children of November; It's the start of the true holiday season; It's home to possibly the single greatest day of eating in America. What's not to love?

I'm afraid until Thanksgiving is actually upon us there will likely be a continued dearth of recipes, reviews, and good things to blog about. Food here is still, well, uninteresting. Our valley cafe on tuesdays is good - today's dishes surrounded Italian, specifically perhaps Milanese, dishes. It was good, bringing fresh bitter-sweet slaw, stewed Chickpeas, and an interesting spaghetti torte, and a Chicken dish to The Foxes.

I miss Italian like mia mamma makes.

In the interim, enjoy these pics - long overdue - from the Goffstown (NH) Pumpkin Festival. I've been meaning to post them with this recipe for Pumpkin Softies - a recurring cookie of mine - since mid October! So sorry about that...

The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown! The biggest and greatest in fact!

Punkin Chunkin' on the river!

A great little cafe in town. Check it out if you're in area!

Mmmm... Tremendous amounts of Apple Crisp, Pumpkin Pie, Individually wrapped baked goods. Not to mention the dessert competition tasting table! My god, I love Fall...

And here's my most recent recipe for Pumpkin Spice-Softies:

Makes 2 Dozen

· ½ cup Butter, softened

· ½ cup sugar

o 1/3 cup extra reserved for rolling

· 1/4 cup honey and/or maple syrup

o Puree ¼ cup honey with ¼ cup dates, ¼ cup craisins, 1/3 cup boiling water and incorporate into wet ingredients

· 2/3 cup pumpkin puree

· 1/3 cup molasses, darker the better!

· 1 egg

· 2 ¼ cups whole wheat flour (or white, unbleached)

· ¼ cup oatmeal

· 1 ½ teaspoons baking soda

· 2 teaspoons cinnamon

· 2 teaspoons ginger

· 1 teaspoon ground cloves

· ½ teaspoon salt

· Chocolate Chips, Cinnamon, Brown Sugar, Ginger to taste for rolling

Combine Sugar, butter, honey, pumpkin, and egg in a large mixing bowl, combining well. The butter won’t fully incorporate but remain slightly chunky.

Combine extra sugar, extra spices (listed at bottom) and set aside chips for finishing the cookies.

Combine all dry ingredients left and slowly spoon into wet batter, mixing very thoroughly. An electric mixer makes this much easier.

Set aside for 20 minutes or so, or until sufficiently chilled so that the batter can be more or less rolled into walnut-sized balls by hand.

Roll in sugar-spice mixture and set about 1-2 inches apart on a greased cookie sheet or parchment paper. Press several chocolate chips into each ball and flatten slightly while on sheet. Bake for 8-12 minutes at 350° or until cookies are solid to the touch and crack slightly. They will darken due to the sugar caramelizing, not burning.

A Strong showing but they dodn't last but a few days...

The Sugar-spice coating makes the difference, don't skimp...

Enjoy. I know I do.

Early pumpkins? Never...

I miss pumpkin pie, Apple crisp, and maple syrup atop buckwheat pancakes. Nostalgia? Maybe. The coming of fall, my favorite season? Definitely. Whatever the cause all I can think of between tests and college work is Apple picking, Halloween, and thanksgiving. So here's my attempt at impromptu pocket pies. They're not exactly the proper shape or consistency of good pre but they hit the spot as I explore the idea of a shared kitchen...

Mini pies of pumpkin
For the filing I used simple pumpkin puree, an egg, sugar, and cinnamon to taste. The crust was 1 cup flour to 1 tbsp flax meal, pinch of salt, and 1/3 cup sugar.
I learned you need butter in crust more than anything.
Oh well, consistency side my mini press tasted good!

Enjoy the fall yall

Baking Up a Slow Weekend...

So the fact that I haven't baked much from The Bread Bible has been bothering me. Being Hanukkah and the holidays generally, I decided to try Challah.

Well, I promptly botched the recipe from the book, and a smaller batch (simpler batch...) from King Arthur Flower never rose properly (but looked and tested pretty good).

What I did bake that came out well was a loaf of delicious

Low-Fat High-Texture Pumpkin Bread

Thanks to my new William Sonoma 1lb Gold non-stick Loaf Pan I found the enthusiasm to bake a perfect loaf.

1.5 cups whole wheat flower (light whole wheat is good)

1 cup sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp ginger

.75 tsp salt

2 tbsp baking soda

2 tbsp flax meal

1/2 cup applesauce

1 cup shredded (grated carrots), drained

1.5 cups canned (or homemade) pumpkin puree

2 large eggs

1/3 cup water

A sprinkling of walnuts, shopped, and to your liking...

Combine the dry ingredients then add in all of the wet ones. Mix well, but not too well - never over-mix quick breads!

Lightly grease your loaf pan (or hardly at all with your gold non-stick William Sonoma loaf pan :D) and add batter.

Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes, or until an inserted knife is just dry. Careful not to over bake, however. Letting the pan stand to cool will complete any baking (or over bake it...)

Makes 1 large loaf.

It was moist, sweet, pumpkin-y, and perfect. The key is in the pumpkin/carrot/applesauce additions.

possibly my best quick bread yet! For despite common belief, substitution (and the omition of fat) does not harm these quick breads if done well.