Pumpkin Cream Puffs with Maple Glaze - Frosting for the Cause guest post

Hello Everyone!

I'm very excited to share my guest post at Frosting for the Cause today.  If you haven't already, you'll want to check out all the wonderful stories and recipes posted here throughout the year. Here's the link to my post.

Again, thank you, Paula for creating such a fantastic project! This weekend I'll be participating in Race for the Cure, so Sugared Sam made a donation to Susan G. Komen  Race for the Cure Maryland and tomorrow morning I'll be delivering the cream puffs to Gilchrist Hospice Care.

Chocolate-Covered Pumpkin Spice Caramels

You know those days (weeks) when the whole universe is plotting against you?  Sigh.

It all started with a can of pumpkin – one that is still hiding somewhere in my kitchen.

Plan A – My best friend and I were getting together to celebrate our birthdays. As an extra treat, I wanted to make her some pumpkin spice caramels. I poured cream into a pan, turned on the burner, and reached into the cupboard for the pumpkin.  It wasn’t there, so I checked another cabinet, and another, and another. Ack.

Plan B – So the next morning, I added “pick up pumpkin” to my list of errands. Long story short, at the register of the first store I discovered my wallet was still at home.  I finally made it to the supermarket (with the means to purchase the pumpkin), wandered a couple of aisles until I remembered where the pumpkin was, and came upon a great, big hole. Not one can of pumpkin was left. ACK!

Plan C – Okay, so a few days later, I had cream, I had pumpkin, I had butter, and whadda ya know, I had caramel. The next day I took the pan from the fridge so I could cut the candy and bring the treats to work. This probably would have worked better if I had cooked the caramel longer.  ACCKK!

Plan D – Chocolate and caramel, a match made in heaven, right?  I pulled out my candy molds, scooped little balls of soft caramel, and melted some chocolate. Ahhh.

Pumpkin Spice Caramels (from Chasing Some Blue Sky)

1 ½ c heavy cream

1 c canned pumpkin

1 t pumpkin pie spice

2 c sugar

½ c light corn syrup

¼ c water

4 T butter

1 t vanilla

Line an 8 x8 pan with foil and butter pan.

In a medium saucepan, stir together cream, pumpkin, and pumpkin pie spice. Heat the mixture until right before it starts to boil, then remove from heat.

In another (heavy bottomed) pan, stir together sugar, corn syrup, and water.  Over medium heat, boil mixture until it reaches the soft ball stage, 240°F.

Carefully add the pumpkin mixture to the sugar mixture and stir frequently, until the caramel reaches 240°F (I stopped at 230°, which wasn’t quite hot enough for caramel to set completely).

Remove from heat and stir in butter and vanilla.

Pour caramel into the prepared pan and allow to cool completely before cutting candy into pieces.

October Wedding Cake

Two years – where did the time go?

First of all, Happy Anniversary, Laura and Adam. 

Now, ready for a little flashback?

So there I was, up to my elbows in three different kinds of cake (chocolate, peanut butter, and vanilla bean), three separate frosting flavors (peanut butter, chocolate, and vanilla), pounds and pounds of chocolate fondant, and a plethora of sugar leaves. Whew!

The days spent baking a variety of cakes, whipping up many batches of buttercream, and then frosting, fondanting, and stacking the tiers went by in a blur. I even forgot to take pictures.

I just have a few shots of the fondant leaves. After tinting small batches of fondant various shades of gold, orange, red, brown, and green, I’d twist two or three colors together and roll them flat. Then I cut leave shapes from the marbled fondant, added some veins, and let them dry on flower formers. 

 

As a finishing touch, I added just a hint of gold shimmer dust to the leaves.

After the wedding, I received a few pictures of the cake.  Now, I never start a cake without a camera close by.

The peanut butter/chocolate combination was a hit. I adapted the peanut butter pound cake recipe from Cooks.com.

Peanut Butter Pound Cake

1 c butter

½ c shortening

3 c sugar

6 eggs

½ c peanut butter

3 c flour

2 t baking powder

½ t salt

2 t vanilla

1 c mini chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350° and grease two 8-inch cake pans.

In a large bowl, cream together butter, shortening, and cream cheese.  Add sugar and mix thoroughly, then add eggs and mix well. Incorporate peanut butter, mix in flour, baking powder, salt, and vanilla. Finally, stir in chocolate chips and pour batter into prepared pans.

Bake for approximately 50 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in cake comes out clean.

Autumn Brittle

So, I kept seeing this picture of a beautiful, overflowing plate of autumn brittle on Pinterest. All those fall colors and tastes were working together to create a shiny, tempting piece of candy. But it was a million degrees outside and ridiculously humid and I just wasn’t feeling the boiled sugar vibe.

Then my copy of Gesine Bullock-Prado’s Sugar Baby arrived this week and the weather cooled down and all of a sudden I was ready to cook something sweet.  I’ll definitely be pouring over and testing recipes from Sugar Baby this fall and winter (and remembering her advice not to poke hot caramel – thank you, Gesine), but first, the autumn brittle.

Cooking sugar is that interesting combination of relaxing yet somewhat scary and exciting.

Making brittle isn’t something you can do in a hurry. The sugar needs to reach the hard crack stage - 300°F.  So for an hour or more, you stir a little, check the thermometer, wait a little bit, and catch up on some daydreaming before you stir again and recheck the thermometer. . . you get the idea. Peaceful.

As the mixture keeps getting hotter and hotter, though, all the warnings I read in cookbooks and heard on Food Network about sugar burns ran through my mind. There’s also the fact that I’m less than graceful. Kinda worrisome.

Nevertheless, I carefully persevered and ended up with this (and not one single scalding). Thrilling.

 

I’m going to direct you right to the Adventures in Cooking site.  The photos are gorgeous and the recipe is very easy to follow. For my version of the brittle, I used pecans instead of cashews (pecans just seemed more fall-like) and added a teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice to the sugar mixture (‘cause you can’t go wrong with pumpkin pie spice).

Enjoy.

Bacon Truffles

I have something a bit different today – dog treats.

truffle dough

Yes, I bake for my dog. I cook for her, too. She’s fighting cancer and absolutely deserves to be spoiled.  Unlike most beagles, my girl is a very picky eater – probably a result of the chemo.  When I do find something she likes, I make it frequently.

final touch before heading to the oven

Bacon truffles are one of her favorites.  I found the recipe a few years ago in Everyday with Rachael Ray.  Don’t you just love Rachael? The recipe makes an enormous amount of treats (about two pounds), so I always share with the Pet Rescue dogs or my friends’ dogs.

bacon truffles - yes, I made the jar myself

If I don’t have beef broth, I’ll substitute chicken or even vegetable broth.  So far, I’ve had no complaints.  Aside from that, I stick to the original recipe (here’s the link).

about 5 seconds before I ask if she wants a truffle

 

She sees the treat and races to me with ears flying.