Light Wheat Bread

I tried to make a 100% whole wheat bread recently and managed fail completely. This recipe is a nice balance between white flour and whole wheat flour - the whole wheat is a bit harder to work with so the white flour is a nice balance:

My whole wheat flour ready to mix with bread flour - the ratio was about 1:2.

You can see that this dough look a bit tougher than a white bread even before I knead it:

It smoothed out nicely and I set it away to rise:

After an hour or so:

Once the dough had risen, I shaped it into a loaf:

That rose rather nicely, in the end, pleasantly surprising me after my last run in with wheat bread!

Bourbon Apple Pie

I visited Mom just after she had gone apple picking:
She helped me pack my bag to head back to NYC with a good number of apples, including some red delicious that she thought might make a good pie. Red Delicious apples are traditionally a terrible pie apple, but something about the ones she picked over the weekend said pie to her - luckily, she was right.

I mixed up a quick crust:

And the spiced my chopped, peeled apples in preparation for the secret ingredient - bourbon:

After dotting the top of the filling with a bit of butter I was ready to top my pie:

The finished product - a little tart, with the sweetness of the apples balanced with alcohol:

Matt's Almond Joy Birthday Cupcakes

Happy Birthday Matt!
My brother's birthday is today, so I made him some cupcakes (and a miniature cake) from this recipe, per his request to use chocolate, coconut, nuts and a seven-minute frosting.

The cake recipe uses both cocoa powder and melted unsweetened chocolate, being mixed into the creamed butter and eggs below, to make an intense yet light cake:

And instead of making two final cupcakes I made use of my mini cake pans (about 4 inches across) to make a little celebration cake:

The cupcakes baked beautifully:

And once they were done I mixed up a seven-minute (or boiled) frosting. Here is the final step, vanilla being added to the beaten egg whites, sugar, water and cream of tartar:

The final product, topped with a little bit more coconut:

Whole Wheat Corn Muffins

The quickest treat I make with any regularity is probably muffins. Here, my dry ingredients - flour, whole wheat flour, cornmeal and leavening:

Pour in the wet ingredients (milk, butter and eggs):

and twenty minutes later, muffins!

Apple Pie

My kitchen was overflowing with fall fruit:

Naturally, I peeled and sliced some apples...

Rolled out some dough...

Crimped the edges after filling my crust...

And made a pie!

Pumpkin Olive Oil Bread

I took a break from pie in order to make a portable pumpkin treat to bring along with me when I visited my parents - Pumpkin Olive Oil Bread, recipe courtesy of the Serious Eats blog:

It starts like a recular quickbread, but then the secret ingredient is added - Olive Oil!

And, of course, pumpkin. This is some of the pumpkin I cooked down and pureed at home:

The final step is stirring in nuts and raisins, if you like, after you've added your flour and leavening:

Three loaves ready for the oven:

And ready to eat!

Libby's Pumpkin Pie

Pumpkin. Sometimes you just want to transform it to the simplest of pumpkin pies. Here, I've mixed together pumpkin and eggs as a base for the classic recipe from the back of the can of pumpkin you find at the grocery store:
The pumpkin I used here was from a cheese pumpkin that I sliced, cooked, pureed and then stored in my freezer so that I could make pumpkin pie as soon as I felt a chill in the air.

The full set up, before the addition of the evaporated milk:

And once I had given that a good stir, I poured the filling into the graham cracker crust I made earlier and pre-baked:

The finished pie was the perfect classic, aside from a few burnt edges - I had neglected to protect the edges of my pie with tinfoil. oops.