Cream Cheese Filled Pumpkin Muffins

This weekend I had a hankering for some pumpkin cheesecake muffins, so I set out to make the perfect fall treat. My high expectations for the first recipe were sadly not met. However, I knew this idea had a ton of potential, so I found a promising new muffin recipe, combined it with my all-time favorite streusel, and crossed my fingers. Some fall magic happened, and I could barely stop myself from eating a second muffin after the first!

The muffins are fairly moist, well spiced, sweet on top, and have a little tang from the cream cheese to balance it out. The tang from the cream cheese plus the sweetness from the cinnamon honey butter are especially good together.

And now excuse me while I nibble a warm muffin and enjoy the first snow of the year.

Cream Cheese Filled Pumpkin Muffins with Cinnamon Honey Butter

Muffins
12 Tbs (3/4 cup) salted butter, melted
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs, room temperature
1 cup pumpkin puree
1/4 cup milk
2 1/2 cups flour (can replace a little bit with whole wheat flour)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice (or 1/4 tsp cloves, 1/2 tsp allspice, 1/4 tsp nutmeg)
1/2 tsp kosher salt

Streusel
1/3 cup flour
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
4 Tbs cold salted butter, cubed
4 oz cream cheese, cut into 16 cubes*

Cinnamon Honey Butter
4 Tbs salted butter, at room temperature
2 Tbs honey
1/2 tsp cinnamon

1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Line muffin tins with 16-20 paper liners.
2. In a large bowl, mix together the butter, brown sugar, and vanilla. Add the eggs, and mix. Add pumpkin and milk; beat until smooth and creamy. Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, and salt. Mix until just combined; do not over-mix.
3. Make the streusel. Combine the flour, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Add the butter and crumble with your fingers.
4. Divide the batter among the prepared tins. Push 1 cube of cream cheese into each muffin. Sprinkle on the streusel, pressing into the tops of the muffins a little bit. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
5. Make the cinnamon butter. In a small bowl, combine the butter, honey, and cinnamon.
6. Serve smeared with cinnamon butter.

*Cream cheese can be doubled if you like a lot of cream cheese. If you want more of a cheesecake filling, mix together 6 oz room temp cream cheese, 1 egg yolk, 1/2 tsp vanilla, and 3 Tbs sugar. I would recommend sticking to the plain cream cheese if you do the cinnamon honey butter, otherwise it will be overwhelmingly sweet.

Muffin and butter recipe from: https://www.halfbakedharvest.com/pumpkin-coffee-cake-muffins/

Pumpkin Muffins

How was your Christmas?

Ours was wonderful. I'm in Taiwan with my family, but we took a week before Christmas to vacation in Vietnam. It was amazing! We tried a lot of ethnic food, which did some pretty sketchy things to our stomachs--fried corn, pho, fish stir fry at a restaurant which Obama ate at, and more seafood than I've ever eaten in my life. We're ok though, so no regrets. We spent a few days on a boat cruising through Ha Long Bay, one of the seven natural wonders of the world. The rocky islands rising out of the mist are surreal.

We came back to Taiwan on the 24th and three minutes after we stepped foot in the apartment, my mom and I were in the kitchen, making breadsticks, zuppa toscana, and peppermint ice cream for our Christmas Eve dinner.

Christmas Day was filled with monkey bread, cookies, steak, wrapping paper, and Christmas music.

Now it's Boxing Day, as they say in New Zealand. A day to relax, enjoy the new presents, and do a little more baking. Pumpkin muffins are an easy and tasty treat if you're looking for something to make today, like me. They're tender, not too crumbly, and just a little bit sweet. I love the seeds and the crumble because it gives them more yummy flavor and texture. The raisins too, except that we usually leave them out because SOME PEOPLE who shall not be named do not like them. *Ahem* But we devour these muffins at every opportunity--breakfast, second breakfast, lunch, snack, dessert, midnight snack... They're healthy enough that it's justified. Right?

This is a recipe that is always in our fall-winter recipe rotation. They're just so warm and comforting! I actually took these pictures a few years ago and have been meaning to share the recipe with you ever since, but that's neither here nor there. So, you'd better make up for lost time and get baking! Merry Christmas!

Pumpkin Crumble Muffins
Makes: 18 regular muffins

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
3/4 tsp. ground ginger
1/8 tsp. ground allspice
1/8 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
3/4 cup canned pure pumpkin
1/4 cup well-shaken buttermilk*
2 large eggs
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup raisins
3 Tbs. raw green (hulled) pumpkin seeds (pepitas), divided

Crumble Topping, optional:
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 Tbs. butter, softened

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 400ºF with rack in the middle. Butter muffin pan or use muffin papers.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, spices, and salt.
3. In a medium bowl, combine butter, brown sugar, pumpkin, buttermilk, eggs, and vanilla. Add to dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Do not overmix.
4. Gently stir in raisins and 2 tablespoons pumpkin seeds.
5. Evenly divide batter among prepared muffin cups and sprinkle with remaining pepitas.
6. Make crumble topping: Combine ingredients in small bowl. Cut butter in until crumbly. Sprinkle onto tops of muffins.
7. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Cool in muffin tin for 5 minutes, then remove from muffin tin and cool on a wire rack.

*To make 1 cup of buttermilk substitute: 1 Tbs. vinegar or lemon juice + just enough milk to make 1 cup. Let sit for five minutes before using.

Making Apple Cider

I've been at college for three weeks now. So far, I'm enjoying it. There's plenty of homework, but also plenty of fun activities. I'm really liking my classes too, which is good (well, most of them—I'm still trying to convince myself that I like speech class).

This weekend I am getting away from campus and am in Michigan at my roommate’s house for labor day. Even though I’m not in a foreign country, I’m still having new experiences. This weekend they were food-related (the best kind)!

I made apple cider! I feel like a pro, even though I only helped for a few hours, and I mostly just put the apples in the top of the apple grinder. What’s the apple grinder? Don’t worry, I’ll explain the whole process.

What’s the first thing you have to do when making apple cider? Pick the apples, duh! I didn’t help with this part, but the Smiths have quite a few apple trees on their property that they picked the apples from.

Next, they rinsed them off in some water. No unnecessary dirt in my cider, please!

Then the apples had to be cut into quarters so that they would fit in the masher. If the apples are a little bruised or mottled, no worries! They will still taste good when made into juice. Just throw out the rotten ones—yuck!

The apples then have to be ground into chunks so that they can be easily squished. One person put quartered apples into the top of this machine while another turned a helm-ish looking wheel. The ground apples came out the bottom, and every so often someone had to scrape them down into the bowl.

After being ground, the apples can finally go into the press, a contraption that squishes the apples between wooden blocks; a piece of mesh strains the juice from the squished apples. The juice comes out a tap at the bottom, and flows through a funnel into a bottle.

And that’s it! It takes quite a few people working on this to get it done efficiently. At least four to work at a good pace, but more is always better to trade off when muscles get tired.

We, of course, were doing this all by hand, but most farms will use machines.

Joanna and I got a jug to take back to Bethel as a reward for helping! Apparently apple cider is really good with ginger snaps...

Later that night, I was wondering what the difference between apple cider and apple juice is. Well, it turns out it’s not a straightforward answer. Here are three ways that companies may base labelling on:
1) Apple cider is less processed and less strained than apple juice.
2) Apple cider is made with apples picked early in the season.
3) For some companies, only the label is the difference between the two.

At the end of the day, we sat down together with friends and had an amazing meal of venison burgers and homegrown sweet corn. The Smiths shot the deer and ground the meat themselves for the venison burgers; it was so good that if I had had room, I would have eaten a second! The Smiths also grew the sweet corn in their garden—how awesome is that?! Along with this meal, we had our freshly made apple cider. So much homemade food. It just doesn’t get much better.

If you want to learn how to make your own apple cider, this is a great resource to ensure the safety of the final product.
If you want to make easy, flavorful (but not completely traditional) apple cider, this looks like a great recipe.

Sources: http://www.thekitchn.com/whats-the-difference-between-apple-cider-apple-juice-word-of-mouth-178470

Brown Butter Glazed Apple Cinnamon Baked Donuts

I must say, these little beauties were so good that I made them twice in the same week.

Not surprising, considering the recipe is from Joy the Baker—she has the best baked donut recipes (just take her Brown Butter Baked Doughnuts for instance—yum!).

The flavors of these donuts are enticingly reminiscent of fall:

Shredded apple is the biggest autumn indicator—it takes me back to picking apples in the orchards of Michigan, then eating warm donuts alongside some fresh apple cider. *sigh*

Cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger complement the apples perfectly, and make the donuts smell twice as good when baking.

Brown butter glaze is nutty and aromatic, with a warm, comforting flavor. You can never go wrong slathering donuts in a glaze starring this!

These donuts are best served fresh—they're so wonderfully moist, thanks to the shredded apple and the buttermilk.

Apple Cinnamon Baked Donuts with Brown Butter Glaze
Makes: 8-9 donuts

Recipe from: http://joythebaker.com/2013/10/apple-cinnamon-baked-doughnuts-with-brown-butter-glaze/

Snickerdoodles

Do these cookies look like little mouthfuls of goodness or what?
If you answered YES then you are right! When I ate one of these snickerdoodles straight out of the oven, I was like yuuuuum that was good then I may or may not have stuffed two more straight into my mouth.

I mean, after waiting ten whole minutes for them to bake while amazing smells floated out of the oven, teasing my nose, how could I not eat multiple cookies? The smells just filled my head with visions of fall leaves, snuggly kitties, and warm drinks.
Also, it was probably a good thing that I made these snickerdoodles as a last-minute kind of thing on a school night, otherwise I would have just gone on munching them all day long. I’m telling you, they’re good.

So make some cookies, sit down with your warm morsels of goodness, and enjoy some cookie history—the best kind of history...

…Snickerdoodles are another one of those desserts that is shrouded in mystery. We know that they have been around from at least 1889, and were especially popular in Pennsylvania. But that’s about it—from here, it’s all opinion. Some say they originate from the German phrase Schnecke Knödel which means "snail dumpling". Another belief is that the name came from a series of tall tales in the early 1990s based around a hero named Snickerdoodle. Still others have even stranger theories—and they’re all just that, theories. So there you have it. A brief history of snicker doodles.

Enjoy these cinnamon-y little treats!

Snickerdoodles
Makes: 3 dozen
Time: 40 minutes

Recipe from: http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2013/05/19/soft-thick-snickerdoodles-in-20-minutes/

Spice Doughnuts with Brown Butter Glaze

Lately, it's been 60°F here in Moscow—fall seemed to come almost overnight, complete with a cold for me.

This horribly obnoxious cold started right at the beginning of the week, forcing me to suffer through five endless days of school with it. Within those five days, I had four tests, which meant that between sniffles, I had to quietly (and very awkwardly) blow my nose while avoiding eye contact with everyone in the otherwise silent room. Let's just say that it made for a long week, and I never thought the weekend would come. Miraculously, I was almost better by the time it did arrive, so then I could enjoy it by making us some fall donuts!

I think cats also know when fall has come. After keeping me warm during the night by cuddling with me, Kamber also kept me company in the kitchen, weaving in and out of my legs, tripping me up, begging for attention. Later as Mom was eating her fresh donuts on the couch, Kamber nosed her way onto Mom's lap. Kamber really seemed to want a bite of fall and some warmth!

These donuts have a cozy aroma...one bite of these and you'll get a mouthful of fall spices: cinnamon, allspice, ginger, and nutmeg. A yummy treat for a cold morning!

Spice Doughnuts with Brown Butter Glaze

Time: 35 minutes

Makes: 15 donuts

Recipe from: http://tutti-dolci.com/2014/09/spice-doughnuts-with-brown-butter-glaze/

Apple Salad

A nice, citrusy salad perfect for anytime of the year, but especially fall. Switch the types of cheese and toppings to mix it up.

Apple Salad

Dressing ingredients:

1/2 cup olive oil

4 tsp apple cider vinegar

Small squirt Dijon mustard

1/8 tsp salt

For the salad:

Thinly sliced apples

Candied walnuts

Dried cranberries or dried cherries

Chunks of brie cheese or thin slices of parmesan

Mixed greens

Apple dressing

1. Put dressing ingredients in a small plastic bowl with a top.

2. Seal the lid and shake.

3. Add more ingredients to taste.

4. Sprinkle over mixed greens and add the rest of the toppings.

Apple Blonde Brownies

These brownies turned out "chewy-gooey", to quote my dad. I told him it was the same magic as the brown butter salted caramel snickerdoodles...the caramels. (We did use the caramel bits.) And if you want a "chewy-gooey" fall recipe that takes less effort than the snickerdoodles, this is the recipe. My mom helped me make this very sweet fall dessert. We used some kind of red apple instead of Granny Smith apples, which tasted very good, but I'm sure contributed to the sweetness along with the caramel bits. You could also add some extra cinnamon by using cinnamon sugar for sprinkling at the end instead of just plain sugar.

Apple Blonde Brownies

Originally from gourmet mom on the go

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 45 mins

Total time: 1 hour

Serves: 16

Recipe from:

http://www.lemonsforlulu.com/2012/10/04/caramel-apple-brownies/

http://www.gourmetmomonthego.com/2009/09/apple-brownies.html

Brown Butter Salted Caramel Snickerdoodles

I know, it's a mouthful to say! But they're also mouthfuls of yumminess. I made these yesterday with my mom...thank goodness she helped! It took quite awhile, and without her I would have spent at least an extra hour in the kitchen. This is one of those recipes I found on Pinterest from Alyssa on therecipecritic.com. I find a lot of recipes on Pinterest...I have pinned so many foods I think it will take me my whole life to make them all!

Anyways, I wanted to make something fall-ish, since we finally live in a four season country! Snickerdoodles and caramel are definitely fall foods; I think salted caramel is becoming very popular recently. I've seen a lot of brown butter recipes, too. So I like to think of these as very up-to-date cookies.

They were absolutely delicious fresh from the oven! The caramel was so gooey, and the salt was the perfect amount. At first I was worried about the salt because the pre-baked cookies were in a ball form, so the salt didn't really stick, and it was only in the very middle. But, since the caramel was in the middle too, it worked out just fine. In most of the cookies we just put one caramel, and we made our cookies pretty small, so we ended up with a lot more than 24!

They got the approval of my family; Dad ate one after dinner, then came into the living room with the rest of us. He said "What is in the middle?". We just said magic...after all, all those flavors and suprises do make these cookies pretty magical!

Brown Butter Salted Caramel Snickerdoodles

Recipe from: http://therecipecritic.com/2013/07/brown-butter-salted-caramel-snickerdoodles/