Pumpkin Whoopie Pies
01 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in at least one kid ate it, dessert, fruit, pumpkin
Please, PLEASE add these to your fall to-bake list. You don’t want to miss them!
After seeing several different recipes all over Pinterest this fall, I found the recipe here, on a blog I read regularly, and made a few small changes…primarily I used less of some of the spices because that’s my personal preference, and I made mine smaller, which I’ll detail in a minute.
For the cakes/cookies:
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups canned pumpkin (one can is pretty close)
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 Tbl ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
3/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
Preheat the oven to 350 and line your baking sheet with parchment paper or, even better, a silicone mat.
Beat together the brown sugar and butter until combined. Add the pumpkin and the egg and beat well. Add the vanilla and beat until combined. Set aside.
Combine the dry ingredients. Add the flour mixture to the pumpkin mixture 1/4 cup at a time and beat on low until all combined.
Scoop the dough onto the baking sheet in heaping-tablespoon size. Bake for about 8-11 minutes, or until the whoopies are firm to the touch. Let the cakes cool on the sheet for about 3 minutes and then transfer to a rack to cool completely.
After they are completely cooled, cut the cookies in half across the middle, to make a top and a bottom. It doesn’t matter at all if they are symmetrical. Each cookie, now in two parts, will be put together with the frosting, which is below.
For the frosting:
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter
3 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
Beat cream cheese and butter until smooth and creamy. Beat in vanilla and salt until blended. Gradually add powdered sugar, beat until light and fluffy. Put a dollop of frosting on each bottom of the cookie and cover with the top.
Prepare to be amazed…these are delicious!
on such a lovely plate because these were headed to a neighbor!
THE Pumpkin Dessert
09 Nov 2010 2 Comments
in company's coming!, dessert, holidays, pumpkin
I’ve seen this recipe several places but never made it until last weekend. And it’s a keeper! It’s definitely NOT low-fat, so it’s a good one to make with lots of company so that there aren’t leftovers.
I found it here and will only make one tiny change next time I make it, and that’s just reducing the nuts in it.
15 oz. can pumpkin
1 can evaporated milk
3 eggs
1 c. sugar
4 t. Pampered Chef Cinnamon Plus (or 2 tsp. cinnamon and 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice)
1 yellow cake mix
3/4 c. butter, melted
1 1/2 c. chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans) – I used pecans, and I’ll use about a cup next time. 1 1/3 cups (what was in the bag) seemed like too much to me.
Preheat oven to 350. Combine first 5 ingredients. Pour in a greased 9×13 pan. Crumble yellow cake mix on top. Pour butter evenly over all. Sprinkle with nuts. Bake 1 hour. Serve with whipped topping.
Turtle Pumpkin Pie
08 Dec 2009 Leave a Comment
I made this for the first time a couple of years ago, and it got rave reviews! I do like traditional pumpkin pie, but this is good if you want to change it up a bit, too.
It makes 10 servings, and is no-bake and very quick to put together.
1/4 cup plus 2 T caramel ice cream topping, divided
1 graham cracker crust
1/2 cup plus 2 T chopped pecans, divided
2 pkg (3.4 oz each) Vanilla instant pudding
1 cup cold milk
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 (8 oz) tub Cool Whip Lite, thawed, divided
Pour 1/4 cup caramel topping into crust; sprinkle with 1/2 cup pecans.
Beat pudding mixes, milk, pumpkin and spices with whisk until blended. Stir in 1 1/2 cups Cool Whip. Spoon into crust.
Refrigerate 1 hour. Top with remaining Cool Whip, caramel topping and pecans just before serving.
Pumpkin Cookies
03 Oct 2009 4 Comments
in at least one kid ate it, dessert, pumpkin
I know, I know…more pumpkin??
These are really good, and it’s an old recipe of my mom’s. You’ve got to try these!
2 cups flour
1 cup uncooked oats (I use quick)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp salt
1 cup softened butter or margarine (I used one stick of each the last time I made these, and they turned out great)
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup pumpkin
1 cup chocolate chips
Cream cheese frosting (you can make a really easy cream cheese frosting out of 16 oz of softened cream cheese and 2 cups of powdered sugar)
Preheat oven to 350. Lightly grease cookie sheets (very important…don’t forget this!)
Combine first 5 ingredients and set aside. Cream butter and sugars together, beating until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla; mix well. Alternate dry ingredients and pumpkin, mixing well after each addition. Stir in chocolate chips.
Drop ¼ cup* dough on greased cookie sheets. Bake 20-25 minutes until cookies are firm and are lightly browned. Cool on racks. Frost when cool.
*I make them significantly smaller than the recipe calls for, and bake them for a few minutes less. This makes 20 cookies if you make them as the recipe calls for (and they are HUGE).
Pumpkin Pie Bars
29 Sep 2009 1 Comment
Kraft does it again! I haven’t made these in a few years, but they are so, so good.
1-1/3 cups flour
3/4 cup granulated sugar, divided
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup (1-1/2 sticks) cold butter or margarine
1 cup old-fashioned or quick-cooking oats, uncooked
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1 pkg. (8 oz.) light cream cheese, softened
3 eggs
1 can (15 oz.) pumpkin
1 Tbsp. pumpkin pie spice
Heat oven to 350°F. Line 13×9-inch pan with foil, with ends of foil extending over sides; grease foil. Mix flour, 1/4 granulated sugar and brown sugar in medium bowl; cut in butter with pastry blender or 2 knives until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in oats and nuts.
Reserve 1 cup oat mixture; press remaining onto bottom of prepared pan. Bake 15 min. Beat cream cheese, remaining sugar, eggs, pumpkin and spice with mixer until well blended. Pour over crust; sprinkle with reserved crumb mixture.
Bake 25 min.; cool 10 min. Use foil to transfer dessert from pan to wire rack; cool completely.
TIP: Kraft suggests this to make it easy to remove the bars from a pan:
Mold foil over bottom of pan leaving 3 inches extending over the short sides. Pop pre-formed molded foil into pan and crunch extended sides of foil to form handles. Use handles to lift baked item out of pan.
It’s Fall!
24 Sep 2009 2 Comments
Finally…fall is officially here! Which to me means two things in the kitchen: soup, and pumpkin stuff. Not together. Though there probably is a really good pumpkin soup recipe somewhere.
So check back often – there will be recipes added regularly over the next couple of weeks as I try a few new things! Sonya just added White Chicken Chili, which we tried last year and loved. And I just ate a (very) leftover-from-the-freezer bowl of Chipotle Chili yesterday which was delicious, freezer burn and all. We’re trying a new soup recipe tonight for dinner, and I can’t wait to have it simmering on the stove.
What is your favorite soup to make?
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins
17 Sep 2009 Leave a Comment
in at least one kid ate it, bread/muffins, freezes well, pumpkin, there's chocolate in this!
Sara posted her recipe a couple of days ago (which I will be trying soon!) and it got me thinking about a recipe I used last year and tweaked a little to save on calories and fat. I made a batch today (my first of the fall…I love pumpkin so much that I’m giving it it’s own category over there on the right!) and messed with the recipe a bit more, and while these are no where near healthy, I’ll take reduced fat/calories and full flavor any day! For the record, I’ve cut the sugar from 2 cups, the chocolate chips from 2 cups, and the oil from 1 1/2 cups. I added in the applesauce as an oil substitute and changed the flour to include some whole wheat…you might be able to go half and half with the flour and not notice the difference. I’ll try that next time.
4 eggs
1 3/4 cups white sugar
1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup applesauce
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 (or 1 1/2) cup semisweet chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Prepare cupcake pans with spray or paper liners. This makes a lot: 24 regular-sized muffins and 12 mini muffins.
Beat the eggs in a large bowl, and mix in the sugar, pumpkin, oil and applesauce.
In a medium bowl, mix the 2 flours, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Blend into the egg and pumpkin mixture. Fold in the chocolate chips. Transfer to the muffin pans.
Bake in the preheated oven 15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove muffins from pans, and cool on a wire rack (or the counter if you’re like me and too lazy to get out your wire racks).
do you like i how class things up with the lightning mcqueen papers?
Pumpkin Bread
02 Apr 2009 Leave a Comment
in at least one kid ate it, bread/muffins, breakfast, freezes well, pumpkin
This recipe came from a local bakery’s mailing one time several years ago, and I’m not sure why, but I’d never made it until fairly recently. And oh my goodness, is it good. I also happen to believe that pumpkin bread is good any time of the year, not just in the fall, which is why I made it yesterday morning when we had friends over to play.
2/3 cup canola oil
2 2/3 cups sugar
4 large eggs
1 15-oz can pumpkin
2/3 cup water
3 1/3 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground nutmeg (I use 1/2 tsp)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon (I use 1 tsp)
1 tsp vanilla
Preheat oven to 350. Lightly grease and flour two 9×5″ loaf pans.
In large bowl of an electric mixer, beat together oil and sugar. Beat in eggs, pumpkin and water. Add all dry ingredients; mix well. Beat in vanilla.
Spoon half the batter into each pan. Bake 1 hour or until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let cool before removing from pans. Makes about 20-24 slices.
**I added a few chocolate chips, and I don’t recommend it…they taste great, of course, but because this is a relatively thin batter, they just sink to the bottom of the pan when baking. Also, the top of this bread gets pretty brown. Don’t worry!
The recipe also gives this variation, which I’m sure would be delicious: for Pumpkin Praline Bread, stir together 1 cup chopped pecans, 1/2 cup packed brown sugar, and 4 tsp melted butter. Sprinkle over loaves before baking.
Pumpkin Pancakes
20 Mar 2009 Leave a Comment
in at least one kid ate it, breakfast, freezes well, pumpkin
I made these last night for dinner (along with eggs and some turkey sausage) and tried to get the kids to be excited about orange pancakes! On the opening day of the NCAA tournament! I told them we were having basketball pancakes for dinner, but no one was overly excited about it. Probably because they weren’t all that orange, and some of them were ovals.
BUT – they were good, and it makes a ton, so now I have a quick breakfast ready in the freezer for one of those days that the boys ask for pancakes. Honestly, I wouldn’t have minded a little more pumpkin flavor, and I think that the boys would have been OK with that too. But, when you add in too much pumpkin, the pancakes don’t bake as well, so I’ll probably just stick pretty close to the recipe next time, too. (BTW, this is from the Dierbergs cooking magazine.)
Here it is!
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 Tbl baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbl sugar
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
2 eggs, slightly beaten
2 cups buttermilk
1/2 cup canned pure pumpkin
3 Tbl vegetable oil
Maple syrup
In large bowl, whisk together flours, baking powder, salt, sugar and spice. In medium bowl, whisk together eggs and buttermilk; whisk in pumpkin and oil. Make well in center of flour mixture. Pour in pumpkin mixture; stir just until moistened. (Batter will be a little lumpy.)
Lightly coat large nonstick skillet or griddle with butter or Pam; heat over medium high heat. Spoon onto griddle (this recipe is really for “dollar pancakes” but who has time for that? I made them bigger – more like 3-4 inch diameter, and spread out the batter so it isn’t too thick, otherwise they won’t cook through.). Cook until bubbles appear in tops and bottoms are lightly browned. Turn and cook until other side is lightly browned and serve with syrup (duh).
It supposedly makes 40 dollar-sized pancakes, and I’d say it made about 20 the size I made them.
To freeze them, just line a cookie sheet with wax paper, lay them in a single layer, stick in the freezer for an hour (or more if you forget – no big deal), and then peel off wax paper and put in freezer-safe container.
