From our Food Goddess, TaMara:
Finally got down to some cooking. I started the week out with Pumpkin Squares (recipe here), a real favorite with everyone, so a big pan goes pretty quickly. Then it was on to a good spicy pumpkin cookie, the featured recipe tonight. The photo shows both a crumble topping and a cream cheese frosting, but since I really preferred the crumble topping, that’s what I included in the recipe. These freeze well, so they can travel to Thanksgiving dinner with family.
I really wanted to make a Pumpkin Bundt Cake this year, so I went searching for recipes and adapted one to use buttermilk, click here, which I thought created a very moist, flavorful cake.
And finally, Pumpkin Cream Pie with a brown sugar whipped cream topping, which I am really enjoying at Thanksgiving instead of the traditional custard pumpkin pie. Pictures and recipe here. I’ll probably make it again this year.
For the pet lovers, Bixby update is here. He’s five months old this week and a wild thing. And as I was writing this, JeffreyW put up some adorable photos of shelter puppies in sweaters, click here. Please keep your squeals to a minimum.
Now it’s your turn. Are you a fan of pumpkin? I know it can be one of those ingredients that inspires a very strong response, either positive or negative. What’s your favorite pumpkin recipe or product this time of year? If not pumpkin, what treat really puts you in a fall mood?
Tonight’s recipe:
Spicy Pumpkin Cookies with Crumble Topping
Cookies
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 cups canned solid-pack pumpkin (14 ounces)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp pumpkin spiceCream together butter and sugar; add egg, pumpkin, and vanilla, mixing well. Sift together dry ingredients and slowly mix into pumpkin mixture and mix until well combined. Refrigerate for 15 minutes, then drop by spoonful on a baking sheet. Top with crumble topping, pressing gently into the dough. Refrigerate remaining dough until ready to bake.
Bake for 12-13 minutes at 375 degrees. Makes 2 dozen
Topping
1/2 cup rolled oats (not quick)
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup melted butter
1/4 tsp cinnamonMix together until crumbly
That’s it for this week. Stay warm – TaMara
Tree With Water
The treat that puts me in a fall mood is watching the Dallas Cowboys get beat at home on Thanksgiving.
Steeplejack (tablet)
I love straight-up, traditional pumpkin pie. I also like mincemeat pie, which seems to be a disappearing thing. Probably will make one for Thanksgiving.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack (tablet):
I thought that my father and I were the last people in the country who liked mincemeat pie.
ThresherK
Xgvg dessert is at a low-lactose household with a friend who can’t eat chocolate. And a berry crisp is already taken. I may just try one of these. Good timing.
Kristine
I have some leftover pumpkin in the fridge that now has “cookies” written all over it.
beth
I can’t link from this phone but I used to make a tortellini with pumpkin alfredo sauce from the Food Network. It was so surprisingly delicious.
Steeplejack
@efgoldman, @Omnes Omnibus:
Seems like it gets harder every year to find the Crosse & Blackwell mincemeat in the grocery. I keep saying I’m going to make some from scratch, but I never get around to it.
When I first started noticing that people didn’t seem to be into mincemeat pie, or didn’t even know what it is—I had a friend turn it down once because she’s a vegetarian! (because mincemeat)—I assumed that liking it was a Southern thing, another part of my Crackro-American heritage. It seems that’s not the case, but it is definitely less mainstream than I thought it was.
(And I know that mincemeat was traditionally made with a bit of suet, but there are a lot of vegetarian-friendly recipes. And Crosse & Blackwell doesn’t have suet in it.)
TaMara (BHF)
@beth: That sounds amazing. Here’s the link: Tortellini with Pumpkin Alfredo Sauce
TaMara (BHF)
@Steeplejack: Krogers/King Soopers carries it…we have mincemeat every Thanksgiving, my dad loves it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: Both of my grandmothers used to make it from scratch. My paternal grandmother’s pies were better – primary because she made perfect pie crusts. By feel, of course.
raven
I hate pumpkin
beth
@TaMara (BHF): Yep that’s the one. It’s really light for an alfredo sauce and a very different taste.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yeah, the crust is crucial. The Crosse & Blackwell mincemeat is good enough that I haven’t bestirred myself to make that from scratch, but it always tastes much better in a homemade crust. And I do the fancy lattice top, of course.
Anne Laurie
@Steeplejack:
Mincemeat desserts used to be very popular at Society for Creative Anachronism events. I’ll bet you could find a Game of Thrones analog to persuade your friends it was worth trying!
(And I’ll bet your ‘Cracro-American’ ancestors preserved the Elizabethan tradition, along with the gruesome ballads & the thorny sense of ‘honor’… )
Anne Laurie
@raven:
So does the Spousal Unit. Twice as much for me! :)
gogol's wife
So is “crumb/crumble” the new culinary buzzword? We were in Berkeley and in the fancy restaurants everything had a crumb or a crumble, from the salad to the dessert (raspberry sorbet with lemon-verbena crumble). We live in a chicken parm kind of town so I’m not up on these things.
MomSense
@efgoldman:
I used to make mincemeat pies for my grandfather at Thanksgiving. Sadly he was the last one in the family who liked mincemeat.
This Thanksgiving I’ll make pecan, apple, and pumpkin pies. I like pumpkin pie and I recently tried a pumpkin whoopie pie that was tasty but I don’t like pumpkin bread or any of the pumpkin spice coffee latte flavorings. One fall my grandmother had such a bumper crop of pumpkins that she made a gazillion loaves of pumpkin bread. I swear we ate that stuff with every meal for weeks. I haven’t been able to eat it since that fall and that must have been almost forty years ago.
Steeplejack
@Anne Laurie:
My Crackro-American heritage is not full-on Albion’s Seed. Both my parents are from Tennessee, but my father’s side is descended from French (Alsatian) Huguenots, and I think his father was born in Iowa. And my parents got out of Tennessee in their twenties. So I got mostly the good parts: Southern cooking, country music and a certain sense of humor.
A bit of family lore was previously covered here.
raven
@Anne Laurie: I bitched about Trader Joe’s having all this pumpkin shit for weeks. For my birthday my bride made pumpkin ice cream.
raven
@Steeplejack: We went to Chickamauga this week and I checked out where my Tennessee relative duked it out with the Yankees.
satby
I love pumpkin (not to be contrary raven). Every fall I stock up on fresh ones and slowly cook them over the next few months. Roasting a couple tomorrow, making pumpkin brulee and freezing the extra pulp. Unless I make curried pumpkin soup.
And my pumpkin soap is awesome, if I do say so myself.
raven
@satby: Not at all, I don’t expect people to have the same tastes as me.
Steeplejack
@raven:
My people are from Nashville and up around Clarksville. I was born at Fort Campbell! (Parents trying to make it to Mom’s parents’ farm in the dead of winter and not quite succeeding.)
raven
@Steeplejack: I did basic at Campbell Nov 66. Took the train from Chicago the same time “The Last Train to Clarksville” was on the charts. Jason Figg was with the 11 Tennessee and entered the CSA in Nashville, I have copies of his enlistment docs. His brother, Robert, was in the 1st Tennessee Cavalry, survived the war and became a Chicago firefighter,
Violet
@Steeplejack (tablet): Get mincemeat when in England. Maybe it’s more traditional there?
When I visited my cousin a year ago or so, she made a pumpkin mousse. It was on the back of the can of pumpkin or maybe the can of evaporated milk. It was on some can. It was super easy and amazing.
Steeplejack
@raven:
Clarksville (Montgomery County) went heavy for the Confederacy, even though Tennessee was the last state to secede. But Clarksville was captured by the Union in February 1862, and that was pretty much it, although there was a lot of backing and forthing in the area throughout the war. I have seen a few very old family photographs of men wearing both blue and gray (not the same men!).
raven
@Steeplejack:
Steeplejack
@Violet:
Mincemeat is definitely an English thing, but it seems to have persisted in this country more in the South than elsewhere (although not so strongly as to be considered a “Southern” food, like, say, cornbread). Or maybe more in rural areas than cities?
Schlemazel
@Steeplejack:
Most of it I run into these days is made with green tomatoes & no animal products. It’s OK, I’ll eat it. But the real stuff, the stuff made with meat, and I am particularly partial to venison, is superior in every way.
But a vegetarian should ask, there may be no meat in mincemeat pie.
@Steeplejack:
It is all over rural MN & Iowa, I assume its a farm thing. Not as much as it once was but then neither are farms.
HRA
I made Eisenhower pumpkin pies for years. It was his mother’s recipe. I also make apple for those who hate pumpkin. This year my eldest daughter offered to make the pies.
I grew up with my Mom baking pumpkin wedges that had a pat of butter, a sprinkle of sugar and cinnamon. They were a special treat. My mom also made a pumpkin filling for filo dough. She made her filo.
I hate mincemeat. It’s my husband favorite pie that he cannot have anymore. He is recuperating from 2 stent surgeries and his diet is completely changed now.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: My mincemeat making people never got further south than northern Ohio. Except for the the guy who was a missionary to the Cherokee and followed them on the Trail of Tears, hollowing about the treatment of the Cherokee all the way. He is, however, a great … great uncle.
debit
This is the best pumpkin cheesecake I’ve ever made. Don’t be put off by the crustlessness of it; it is amazing.
And this curry has become my new comfort food this winter; creamy, filling and rich and made of yum.
Steeplejack
@raven:
Montgomery County is just north of Dickson County.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
As Schlemazel said, it’s probably more of a farm thing than a specifically Southern thing. My mother’s family were all farm people.
Yatsuno
If you like gingerbread with a twist, try these. I’m pretty sure I’ve shared before but always worth sharing. And feel free to blog this BHF!
Seven Spice Cookies
2 sticks butter
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp allspice
1/8 tsp mace
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
Blend together butter and sugars and cream for two minutes. Add in eggs one at a time, then the vanilla. Sift together all the dry spices, flour, baking soda, and salt. Add into mixing bowl slowly and mix together until a stiff dough forms. Cover and refigerate for at least two hours.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Let the dough warm up slightly on the counter for about 15 minutes (this will make it easier to form). Roll into balls about the size of a golf ball. Place on cookie sheet about 1 inch apart. Bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Allow to cool on cookie sheet for five minutes before transferring to cooling rack.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: Mine were people who preferred the woods. Lumberman at various levels (some high, some low), guides, and such.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well, still rural: lodges, logging camps, etc. Farm equivalents in non-farm areas.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: Well, that and Congregational clergy (including some who fought against the witch trials even before his daughter was accused and convicted).
TaMara (BHF)
@Yatsuno: I will. And also, gingerbread, I haven’t made that in years, might have to dig up my recipe.
hamletta
My favorite pumpkin recipe is Black Bean & Pumpkin Soup. I usually leave out the ham, though, and substitute some sautéed cremini mushrooms. And then if I swap veggie stock for chicken, I’ve barreled right through vegetarian all the way to vegan.
Except it tastes good.
MomSense
@efgoldman:
Wow, good for mrs. efgoldman. That’s a lot of rolling dough. I always make my pie crusts from scratch just the way my grandmother taught me, even the little designs that she would cut into the crusts for different types of pie. I inherited her rolling pin and every time I use it I feel like the little kid who used to stand on the step stool so I could help. I especially liked helping to eat apple slices with cinnamon and sugar!
Anne Laurie
@Schlemazel:
Much as I love charcuterie, I can never think of forcemeat without a certain ballad coming to mind… (NSFS — Not Safe For the Squeamish)
dance around in your bones
Ok, i was hungry today and after my million mile hike on my fractured hip I wasn’t keen on going grocery shopping,
All of this is to say that I scrounged around in the garage and found a can of pumpkin..It was quite delicious with Tamari saiuce and I feel quite fulfilled.
And now I am going to watch Fry and Lairie and laugh my ass off.
G’night, y’all.
seaboogie
Since this is both a critter and pumpkin thread, I would be remiss not to mention how much dogs (and my cat) love pumpkin. It’s sweet and full of vitamins and fiber, and very good for them. Plus, if your critters need to lose a bit of weight, substitute some of their regular food with canned pumpkin puree. Also, the resulting poops are perfect, important to note for those of us who bat clean-up and know what havoc dietary changes can sometimes cause.
rikyrah
damn those cookies look good
Manyakitty
I’m excited about the cookie recipes! I have several cookie swaps ahead of me and new recipes are essential. Thanks!