Happy Thanksgiving!

I don't take any responsibility for the bird...
But I do make a few things for the Thanksgiving table every year. A quick roundup of the holiday weekend!

For the turkey, a bacon and bourbon flavored onion jam, from this treasure trove of recipes, and a cranberry and dried cherry sauce:

Cinnamon rolls from my grandmother's recipe (instead of dinner rolls. just think of them as pre-buttered!):

And an Alsatian apple tart, a pecan-coffee tart and pumpkin pie from the best recipe I've found online:

I'll be eating plenty of leftovers this week.

Pumpkin-Pecan Pie

Happy Thanksgiving!
With turkey being served in two days, my thoughts are even closer to one of my favorite pies - pumpkin. I tried this variation a few weeks ago to see if there was a way to successfully combine the overly sweet pecan pie into something I would like as much as my favorite.

Once the pie is ready to be baked, it is essentially a layer of pumpkin pie topped with a layer of pecans, and then the sweet pecan filling:

The pie itself is easy to make - just mix together a half recipe of pecan pie filling:

And use your blender to mix up a quick pumpkin pie filling:

The end result, while delicious, cannot compare to a plain pumpkin pie, at least for me. But I'll probably still make it again to make sure!

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!