Wonderful Mistake

I prepared the pumpkin muffin batter last night (for Soteria church service this morning), but made a huge mistake toward the end of combining ingredients in the electric mixer. My mind was somewhere else -- a birthday party my son was late to because I spaced on the start time -- plus I had to double the recipe as I went along. After I tossed double the salt in the batter, I went for the cinnamon, and then shortcircuited.

You see, the cinnamon was supposed to go into the sugar topping, not the batter, and I'd just put two teaspoons of the stuff in there, along with the pumpkin spice. In a daze, I spied the leftover fresh sugar pumpkin puree sitting nearby and scraped those in there, thinking the extra pumpkin would dilute the effect of the strong cinnamon. That, and it was fresh pumpkin, not canned (as the recipe called for), and I read on a Martha Stewart page that if you use fresh, you need to double the spices.

This morning, I was in even more of a daze, so when I had extra batter (the recipe--from Muffin Top), I threw those in as fast as I could as time was winding down for my husband to leave early and put the last baking tin in the oven. Four minutes into the baking time, it hit me that I forgot to sprinkle the cinnamon-sugar on top, ran in there, sprinkled last-minute and prayed for a save.

I had no idea how the muffins turned out, or if I'd baked them enough (not sure about Pampered Chef's metal tester, doesn't wood detect doneness better with the batter sticking to it?). Although, I did taste the raw batter after the cinnamon mix-up, and it wasn't too strong at all.

My husband Eddie reported back that the moist, fully baked pumpkin muffin mistakes were a huge hit, all 28 of 'em were gone in 60 seconds flat, or thereabouts. A daughter of the guitarist in the worship team even asked if I'd give her a baking lesson.

Like I know what I'm doing.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake

Week of Menus did it again, came up with another delicious way to use pumpkin in this pumpkin season. Last night, I prepped as much as I could for the baking off of pumpkin chocolate chip coffee cake, for Soteria church service this morning (I bailed on going, my mind needs to rest, I'm starting to scare myself with signs of early dementia).

Actually, no, I prepared about three days before after I bought two pumpkins, a carving pumpking and a sugar pumpkin. I detailed the sugar pumpkin roasting in a previous blog entry here. Remember I froze the flesh because it would've sat in the fridge for technically longer than three whole days. I had to thaw the rock-hard frozen pumpkin out on the counter because the overnight fridge thaw did very little. I also noticed an awful lot of frost melting into water. That wouldn't do if the fresh pumpkin meat was to replace the canned.

At first, I got the bright idea of slowly stirring the pumpkin in a saucepan without the lid to heat out the excess water. But it wasn't doing it fast enough for me. It seemed to cause more water to occur. So I put the fully thawed pumpkin meat in a colander over a saucepan in the sink to drip the excess water out. After about an hour or two of this, while I made my Halloween chili, enough water had leeched off.

Then, I had to figure out what a 15-oz. can's worth of pumpkin meant in cups. Ed didn't know. So I looked around and noticed I could use the empty Bush's Best Bean can as a template, cleaned out after use of course. It was about 15.8 ounces. Roughly the equivalent (I measured) of 1 cup and a quarter.

This time, with the Week of Menus coffee cake, I decided to prep the night before and bake off the morning of, because the batter in the fridge overnight might've slightly hardened with the softened room temp butter going more solid. That made the batter harder to pour out in the first layer.

Well, the batter was harder to pour out even freshly mixed the morning of. That's just the way the recipe works. It wouldn't have mattered if I made the batter the night before. I couldn't pour it per se, either. I had to halve it, then scoop the chunky batter out, then spread it with a butter knife painstakingly. This took up precious morning time. I layered the batter with the chocolate chip, butter, brown sugar and spice topping.

I barely got the coffee cake out of the oven before having to hand it over to Ed who was out the door for church. He reported to me later that it was all gone, everybody ate it and loved it. He could tell the difference between fresh and canned pumpkin, too. I think I'll try to make pumpkin baked goods with fresh. I prefer the flavor, it's lighter and sweeter but not heavy sweet. Reminded me of yellow squash with a better texture.

Halloween Chili

Last Halloween, as I dove into my bowl of chili at a neighbor's garage, I thought to myself that I would make chili every Halloween. I almost forgot. It was maybe Thursday night when I remembered, bought my ingredients on Friday night, and started preparing the ingredients after my son went off trick or treating, oh, around 6 p.m. Putting this particular chili recipe together is easy. I've made it before and I trust its ingredient list; my health-conscious friend gave me the family recipe, and it's awesome.

I can't believe I'm saying this but, the final end product -- after hours and hours simmering on the stove -- tasted fabulous, even though it's sweeter than spicy and sweeter than other chilis. The recipe calls for a teaspoon of sugar on top of the can of tomato paste and a can of corn. Usually I run screaming in the other direction with such travesties to savory food, but this time, I guess I was just desperate for something to warm my stomach on a rainy, chilly fall. This bowl of chili, topped with sour cream, cilantro, on top of rice, really hit the spot.

Of course, I added to the basic recipe, with a small can of fire-roasted green chiles, adjustments to the size (couldn't find the right can for the corn, so overdid it), type of Bush's Best Beans (I prefer white beans, so omitted the kidneys), a sprinkling of cumin (if I had coriander seeds, I'd have added it too), stuff like that. Because I grew up in Hawaii, I also went with pouring my chili onto my white rice. That's the only way to eat this.

I really liked the way the sweet corn kernels popped in my mouth.

Happy Halloween!

Cafe Amore

Cafe Amore is heavy Italian. At first, I was disappointed by all the cream sauces. I couldn't find anything with straight tomato sauce (on angel hair with a dusting of Parmesan, please?), or anything lighter than duck and unfried calamari in the appetizer section. A little disappointed, I looked again for the fourth time, freeing my mind of strictly Italian.

I came upon the hummus platter and then the half-order of Caesar. Good enough. The Caesar was different than I'm used to at home. Ed usually makes it the traditional way with chopped pieces of Romaine hearts. But Cafe Amore's came with the entire Romaine -- unchopped -- grilled and served with the dressing on the side. (The menu lists this as Romaine hearts though.) The whole thing was decent, but I couldn't get over and get into the grilled lettuce thing. I'm spoiled, I guess.

Our waitress brought the hummus platter for me and Ed's baked spaghetti and meatballs, shortly after. My platter contains weird things like (I think) roasted shallot whole with the skin still attached, a small bowl of roasted garlic, a bowl of what looked like roasted red bell pepper puree, and the hummus. A lot of it need flavor, but hey, anything's better than cream sauce.

I snuck more than one forkful of Ed's dish. I remember baked spaghetti from my former high school boyfriend's mom. She would make it often. Cafe Amore's does it well. I couldn't keep my mind on the live music from Aria Prame and friends or my lackluster hummus platter.

But I was good.

Pumpkin Patch

Reluctantly, I prepared two pumpkins -- one for carving at my son's school tomorrow night, the other for a pumpkin coffee cake I'm baking Saturday -- in my kitchen for Halloween. I wouldn't be doing any of this if it weren't for the usual seasonal imperative observed by society at large. And, if you have children, you're practically compelled to follow along by law.

So anyway, I could've waited till tomorrow and rushed Eddie along to do it all, but I figured, let's get this out of the way already. We probably won't have much time anyway, because tomorrow is jam-packed with swim lessons, the pumpkin carving party at school, then straight to a jazz gig at Cafe Amore for me to review for my Jazz Music Examiner column.

I was doing good with the sharp knife too. At first, I thought about roasting the sugar pumpkin for 30 minutes to soften the skin so I wouldn't cut myself trying to cut it in half. But I couldn't find the website mentioning it that I found two days ago. Carefully working the blade partway, I cracked the rest of the pumpkin by pulling it apart. It was only when I went back to cut the stem off (why? it's not harming anybody!) that I felt the blade shoot from my right hand into my left thumb. Ack! SpongeBob Band-Aid to the rescue and continue on.

Once you get the pumpkin cut in half, the rest is ooey gooey easy--if you like that sort of thing. For the sugar pumpkin, I only had to pull out all the seeds for roasting later and scrape out the stringy stuff with a large spoon. Then put the halves of the pumpkin face down on a shallow baking pan and cover with foil, to roast at 375 degrees in the oven for 1 1/2 hours. Cool on the counter, then scoop out the pulp (flesh) for use in pies or muffins. Or the chocolate chip and pumpkin coffee cake I plan to bake for Soteria service this weekend.

In between this, homework and prepping the bigger regular pumpkin for the carving party, it should've been a long, disastrous mess, but it wasn't. Except for the knife accident and having to scrape all that stringy stuff and sorting the seeds out, it was fairly easy. I didn't relish jabbing a sharp knife straight down the pumpkin several times to carve out the top, then stick my hands in there to pull out seeds and then try to scrape off all the sticky string everywhere. That was a little pain in the rear, I must say. I had to pause a few times and sigh heavily, while my son James patted my arm sympathetically. He was just glad he didn't have to do it.

The seeds were last. I forgot to wash and dry them (some websites say it's not necessary), but I did lay them out in a baking sheet, mixed with oil and salt, and roast them at 325 degrees for 30 minutes, checking after 10 to stir it up a bit.

James did help me scoop out the stringy stuff earlier. But it was clear that he didn't like the gooey feel of it all over his hands. But hey, it's done, and I have roasted pumpkin seeds to snack on and enough pumpkin puree for two batches of pumpkin coffee cake.

Cranberry-Pumpkin Muffins

Joanne Choi, writer of the popular Week of Menus food blog, made her cranberry-pumpkin muffins after cleaning out her pantry and finding a can of pumpkin that would go well with a frozen bag of cranberries from several months ago.

As I made the first batch (after pulling them out of the oven, I decided to make a second batch after dinner tonight), I debated with myself as to whether I should toss in a few chocolate chips Ed bought from the store earlier. Nah, cranberries and pumpkin puree are enough for one muffin.

I actually kept cranberries in the freezer longer than Choi did--almost a year, minus two or three months--and, I left them in their hole-filled packaging. I had to pick through some that had gone bad or got too puffy, but they were fine. I even tasted one just to see ... and made a sour face. These things are more sour than lemons.

They smell like autumn, warm and fulfilling. Soteria church is gonna flip for 'em tomorrow morning.

Pastor's Wife Communion Bread

The second time I made communion bread from A Pastor's Wife blog, I made sure to put the battery in the temp gauge and use it to assure the microwaved hot water was exactly 115 degrees. I over microwaved it (after a minute), because the temp read 150, but as I switched the hot water from a one-cup glass measure to a two-cup (I needed the one cup for the homemade noodles I was making to go into my homemade chicken noodle soup), the temp spiraled down to 115 real fast.

I really like this recipe. I can get my hands into the dough, working the oil, then hot water/molasses/honey in and then shape the batter into four balls. There's just something soothing and holy about it. I know I gave it the tender loving care from my own hands, plus it's therapeutic. I confess, I slipped it a little extra molasses and honey, to make the bread sweeter.

Think this one's the keeper for Soteria church's taking communion.