De Baking Psychopath

What to do when you're sitting around waiting for your full-term baby to come out? As far as "nesting" goes, we've already done everything we can possibly do for the baby's arrival. A full complement of baby clothing/linens/blankets/etc. is all washed, folded, and in their proper places. The "go-bag" has been packed and repacked and is ready-to-go in the car. The car seat is installed. We have all the baby gear (stroller, carrier, bottles/pumps, etc). We've celebrated with friends and co-workers the incoming bundle of joy (thank you all!). My mother has arrived from far away and is settled in. I've finished all my academic obligations, including all my required medical school rotations, residency applications, and licensing exams needed for graduation.  So last week, at the beginning of my vacation/maternity leave month, I decided to stock the freezer with baked goods see if I could make myself busy enough to kick the baby out of dorman...

Well, the pumpkin granola was only Part I. In reality, I had my eyes set out on using up that last can of pumpkin pie filling (not puree) waiting patiently in the pantry with a recipe I found on Libby's website, Pumpkin Granola Muffins. Since I had also needed to get rid of the extra puree leftover from the pumpkin cookies, the granola was a two-fer: it used up the puree and also produced the granola that I needed for the pumpkin muffins! While I was at it, I figured I would try to adapt the recipe to make those oh-so-popular Starbucks copycat-recipe cream cheese pumpkin muffins. So I found a filling recipe to use and then added a bit of espresso powder to the muffin batter to pay homage to the pumpkin spice latte muffin recipes I've also seen lately.  These muffins were moist and had good texture from the granola, and the creamy ribbon of cream cheese running through the muffin was a great complement. Although it's a lot of steps, the recipe makes a lot of muffins (...

Happy holidays! I am still trying to catch up on recipes from the last couple of months, sorry for the delays! Back in mid-Fall, I had half a can of pumpkin left over from making the pumpkin cookies, but I didn't want to make just any old pumpkin bread with it. I scanned though my Google Reader and found this gem of a recipe from Sugarcrafter and set out to make this as my next installment of my granola addiction. Because the pumpkin makes up a good portion of the wet ingredients, this granola is more on the chewy side, and not as crispy-crunchy as other recipes. It's very fragrant and deep flavored, great on yogurt, and it is a good recipe to use up some leftover canned pumpkin. Pumpkin Spice Granola (adapted from Sugarcrafter ) Ingredients: 4 cups old-fashioned oats 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg 1/8 tsp cloves 1/4 cup pumpkin seeds (pepitas) 1/2 cup pecans, coarsely chopped 1/2 cup brown sugar 1/2 cup pumpkin puree 1/4 cup honey Ins...

It's Fall! I had a hankering to make something pumpkin-y, so I decided these soft, cakey cookies fit the bill! I sort of messed with the recipe, decreasing the sugar in the recipe by about 1/4 cup and throwing in an extra egg white that was left over from another recipe, as well as throwing in a handful of toasted pecans, so I am not sure if my cookies represented the correct texture, but regardless, they were soft and moist, gently spiced, and not too sweet. Definitely a repeater. Everyone enjoyed them very much! Pumpkin Toffee Cookies (Adapted from Two Peas and their Pod ) Ingredients: 3 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup unsalted butter (1 stick), at room temperature 1 & 1/4 cups granulated sugar (original recipe had 1 &1/2 cups) 1 cup canned pure pumpkin puree (unsweetened) 1 large egg + 1 egg white (origina...

Last year, I asked Michael to pick up some pumpkin puree. He came back with pumpkin pie filling (already with sweetener and spices), which would be fine if I made pumpkin pie, but I generally use my pumpkin for non-pie recipes. Luckily, the company has some nice recipes on their website for alternate uses for the pie filling, such as this pumpkin quick bread. I used a cup of chopped apple as the "stir-ins" and sprinkled raw pumpkin seeds on top. The bread was moist and flavorful with a really nice crunchy top crust. You can find the recipe here .

Another six months had passed and it was time again for another committee meeting! Here was the menu for this time: Normal menu Bottle of water Spiced Nut Mix Dark chocolate-covered pretzels (Trader Joe's) Green tea and red bean mochi cake Healthy pumpkin bread Low-sugar menu Bottle of water Spiced Nut Mix Cranberry Bran Muffin Savory scallion pancake Healthy pumpkin bread The new kid on the block is this pumpkin bread from Tate's Bake Shop Cookbook. It is packed full of whole grains, and virtually fat- and cholesterol-free. It's really moist and a bit exotic with the cardamom in the mix. It was hearty and tasty and a nice change of pace from the normal pumpkin bread. And you don't notice that there's virtually no butter or other fat in the bread. Healthy Pumpkin Bread (adapted from Tate's Bake Shop Cookbook ) Ingredients : 1/2 cup whole wheat flour 1/2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour 1/2 cup oat flour (you can grind oats in your food processor or blade coffee ...

Woo! Congrats to Mary the Librarian for surviving another pre-National Bundt Day marathon of bundts ! This is quickly becoming a tradition of epic proportions! With just seven minutes left of National Bundt Day, here is my Bundt-a-licious contribution this year! I decided to make the Pumpkin Apple Bundt Cake as featured by the blog StreamingGourmet for a department Fall luncheon tomorrow. Perfect timing. This cake seriously made my house smell amazing. Cinnamon, pumpkin, apples! I can't wait to try some tomorrow! Find the recipe here . I used Stayman Winesap apples, but any good baking apple would be good here, I suspect. More updates tomorrow on the taste! Update: This cake was SO moist and soft, I highly recommend it! The apples were soft but not mushy, and the pumpkin cake was lightly spiced and moist and just the right level of pumpkin-ness. Super yum.

I have discovered bread pudding! For whatever reason, I always thought it would be heavy and dense and like a rock in your stomach. Then I thought about it. It's basically bread soaked in custard and baked. Sounds like baked French toast. How bad could that be? I asked an American co-worker, has he ever eaten bread pudding? What is it like? His answer ("It's moist and custardy, like French toast!") gave me the encouragement I needed to try this recipe. The source of this recipe is the same as the Jewish Honey Cake featured a few posts ago: Kathleen King (of Tate's Bake Shop) via her monthly recipe newsletter. I usually just tuck these recipes away in my "Recipes" e-mail folder, but the recipes from these past two months' e-mails demanded to be made immediately. The chilly weather recently heralded the beginning of pumpkin massacre by baking throughout kitchens all over the US. This recipe gave me a great opportunity to participate in the bloodshed an...

This is where part of the other half of the can of pumpkin I used for the pies went. This is muffin number three from the weekend of muffin baking awhile back. For most of my life, I've eaten and baked my mother's version of pumpkin bread, which has been much modified to suit our family's tastes--less sugar, pine nuts instead of walnuts, no raisins, etc. It's a delicious recipe that reminds me of my childhood, but I haven't tried any other pumpkin bread/muffin recipe in recent memory so I lack a frame of reference to compare it to other recipes. So when I decided I needed to make pumpkin muffins as part of the evacuation plan for the leftover pumpkin puree, I looked around for a new recipe and found this promising recipe in Baking: From my home to yours , which is full of tasty-looking muffin recipes. This recipe tries to recreate the pumpkin muffins sold by Sarabeth's Kitchen, a famed specialty bakery and restaurant chain in NYC. While I've never had...

There are many reasons why this pie came into existence: 1) Two gigantic cans of pumpkin puree kept whispering to me every time I opened my baking cabinet (they had been hastily stockpiled back in the Fall when I'd heard about the Great Pumpkin Shortage, not realizing that it did not affect my area...) as well as two graham cracker crusts, 2) there was not one single from-scratch cookie or muffin left in the house and it was starting to drive me insane, and 3) when given the choice between pumpkin muffins and pie, Michael chose pie. (I might make muffins anyway, shhh!) The cheesecake layer was...inspired. I was going to divide my pumpkin pie filling between the two graham cracker crusts, and I somehow intuitively knew (by my super ninja mental calculation skillz, of course) that there would be a little extra volume to spare in each crust, so I figured, why not add a mini cheesecake layer?? And because pumpkin swirl cheesecake is SO yesterday, I decided to keep the chee...

This year's Thanksgiving break symbolized freedom to me: four days that I refused to think about labwork (to the best of my ability) while I enjoyed the company of friends, family, cats, and leisure reading. A high school classmate of both Michael and myself came to visit us this Thanksgiving. We had a grand ol' time around the 'Burgh as well as venturing out to Cleveland for an inaugural visit. But before the three of us headed out, we spent Thanksgiving Day cooking while the Macy's Day parade blared in the background. First up, Michael prepared two roasting hens for our main course. We've come to prefer non-turkey options as neither of us particularly enjoys turkey, and I am not a lover of white meat in general, so a more reasonable option for small groups such as a turkey breast was not appealing. He used this recipe from Allrecipes.com and roasted our hens until an internal temperature of 180 degrees (about 4-5 hours for our 3 and 1/2 lb hens). Although the...