Who You Callin' "Pumpkin Eater"? (Pumpkin Roll)

Things have gotten a little nuts around here!  We're so lucky to have such amazing friends, and as a result have been having a great deal of fun lately, with dinners, a comedy show, football tailgating and other good times.  I have several recipes from the past week or so to post, but I knew that this one had to be the first in line.

Back in Pennsylvania, my family rarely gets together in the fall without Pumpkin Roll.  My awesome Aunt Jessie has a signature recipe that has graced our tables with its sweet deliciousness for as long as I can remember.  When Bob and I were invited to an autumn dinner party, I knew that it was up to me to continue this tradition.  I also wanted to put my own little spin on a classic, so I added a little extra something - toffee bits.  The result is rich and cakey, like the original, with a little surprise crunch in the middle.

Pumpkin Roll

Cake:

3/4 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 eggs

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup sugar

2/3 cup pumpkin puree

8 oz cream cheese

Icing:

2 tablespoons butter, room temp

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup powdered sugar

3/4 cup toffee bits

Line a 10x15 cookie sheet with parchment paper and butter the paper.  Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and allspice.  Beat the eggs and sugar until fluffy and light yellow, 3-5 minutes.  Add the vanilla and pumpkin.  Gradually add the flour mixture, stirring until incorporated.  Spread the mixture on the cookie sheet and bake at 375 for 14 minutes.  Lay a tea towel flat over your wire rack and sprinkle with powdered sugar.  Remove the cake from the oven and invert on the towel.  Sprinkle the top with a smallt amount of powdered sugar.  Roll the cake up, jelly-roll style, and allow to cool.  (This step ensures that the cake will cool in the shape that you want and won't crack when you roll it back up with the icing in the middle.)   I rolled my length-wise to maximize the length of the log, but you can do yours width-wise to maximize the icing surface area inside.

Beat together the cream cheese, vanilla, powdered sugar and butter.  Unroll the cooled cake, spread the top with the cream cheese mixture.  Sprinkle the toffee bits over the top.  Roll back up, without the towel.  Sift powdered sugar onto the top, then cut off the ragged ends.  Eat that part as a reward for your own traditions.  :o)

Pumpkin Cinnamon Cookies - Finally!

Last post, I tried to tempt you with a little teaser about pumpkin cinnamon cookies.  Did it work?  Like on Law & Order, where the murder victim is just minding her own business, and then bam - cut to crime scene!  Insert Briscoe and Green!  Briscoe wisecrack.  Bum BUM bumbum bumbum bum...

Yeah, I love Law & Order.

Fact:  If you type "Lenny Bris" into the Google search bar, the second search that comes up is "Lenny Briscoe oneliners".  Apparently others share my love of L&O justice.

These cookies need further investigation...

Can you feel the procrastination in the air?  I have my second exam today in a couple hours.  I should be reviewing study guides and taking practice tests.  And I will, but first things first - cookies.  Priorities!

Cuddling cookies

I had some pumpkin left over after making the maple pumpkin muffins, and I wanted to try something different with it.  There is no dearth of pumpkin recipes in the world, but I wasn't looking for pumpkin pie (which accounts for about 98.2% of them in some form or another).  These cookies intrigued me.  The original recipe called for butterscotch chips, but in the store I spotted these cinnamon chips (which I'd forgotten all about until this point) and thought they might do nicely.

They did.  Nicely.  :o)

Distractions = good.

The texture is really more like a little cake top, rather than a cookie.  (Cakies?)  And since pumpkin is a vegetable and these contain no butter, well, it's just  like a side of veggies, right?!

Right?!?

Pumpkin Cinnamon Chip Cookies

(borrowed with endless adoration from Joy the Baker)

2 cups all purpose flour

1-1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

1 cup sugar

1 cup pumpkin

1/2 cup canola oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup cinnamon chips

Bake us, please!

In a small bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and soda, cinnamon and salt.  In a medium bowl, beat eggs and sugar until fluffy and light yellow.  (I used a hand mixture for this because it gave me more control over the amount of air I was adding then the stand mixer.)  Add pumpkin, oil and vanilla, beat until combined.  Add the flour mixture and mix until combined.  Stir in the cinnamon chips.

Line your baking sheets with buttered parchment paper.  Drop the batter onto the paper in 1/4 cups (for large cookies) or heaping tablespoons (for smaller cookies).  Bake on the middle rack at 325 for 16 minutes (large cookies) or 12 minutes (small cookies).

OK, OK, study time...

I left my heart in San Francisco... (Maple Pumpkin Muffins)

...and thankfully not my luggage!

Hubster and me

We're back from the city by the bay.  It was a blast out there, despite the fact that I got sunburned.  Sunburned!  I thought San Francisco was supposed to foggy!!  Honestly, though, if the only thing I have to whine about is nice weather, you can tell how much fun we had.  I also had something really interesting happen for the first time while we were there.

At the tailgate before the game, we were sitting around the tables eating and drinking.  Someone cracked a joke, and one of the people at my table laughed and started to choke.  This person happened to be sitting beside me, and I immediately leaned over and assisted them while they unstuck the food that was stuck in their throat.  It seemed like a pretty natural reaction, and though I can't take credit for performing any sort of life saving intervention, the person did thank me for keeping her calm and instructing her how  to cough productively.  (Very glamorous, I know.)  

While this was going on, people at the other table came over and starting asking if the person was ok.  In the midst of this, I heard someone from my table tell them, "Don't worry, she's a nurse."

Whoa.

They were talking about me!!  Me!!  A nurse!  People thought I was a nurse!

OK, so even though that's not technically true (I have about 5 months and several gazillion exams to pass first), we do joke around that I'm at least 'half a nurse'.  But these strangers didn't know that.  I had been mistaken for an honest to goodness healthcare professional.

:-D

The little things make me happy.

Little things = Happy

Now that we're back home and it's been rainy and gross for a while, it's definitely time for some fall yumminess.  The day before I left, my clinical group had lunch at Reading Terminal Market.  Some of us got dessert from The Flying Monkey Bakery, which if you're in the Philadelphia area you need to check out.  It's all the way in the back of the market, between the sushi place and the fish counter.  They have the most delicious sugary treats.  I had a maple pumpkin gob with the most amazing cream cheese frosting in the middle.   That was my inspiration.  

However, everyone makes gobs this time of year, and I wanted to do something a little different.  These muffins are the perfect rainy day treat when you want a snack with your tea!

Maple Pumpkin Muffins

(Whatever you do, don't forget the brown sugar in the pumpkin mixture.  No good.  Also, I didn't use cupcake papers because I may or may not have made a first batch sans brown sugar that stuck horribly to the paper.)

4 oz cream cheese, softened

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 teaspoons maple flavoring

2 cup flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1-1/2 teaspoon maple flavoring

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vegetable oil

3/4 cup milk

1-1/4 cup pumpkin puree

Beat the cream cheese, 2 tablespoon brown sugar and 2 teaspoons of maple flavoring until well mixed.  Keep in the fridge until you're ready to use.  Sift together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and baking soda.  Mix the remaining brown sugar, maple flavor, eggs, oil, milk and pumpkin until blended.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until just incorporated.  Fill 12 greased muffin tins 2/3 with the pumpkin batter.  Drop 1 teaspoon of the chilled cream cheese mixture onto the batter; top with 2 tablespoons pumpkin batter so that the cream cheese is complete covered.  Bake at 400 for 20 minutes.  Cool on a wire rack.

Share with your sister for taking good care of your dog while you were gone. 

You might have to share with the dog, too.