Pumpkin Muffins

For Halloween I wanted to try a pumpkin muffin.

Now, muffins are something of a hit and miss at my house.
None of the five of us like the same kind so usually the chickens end up
with a few.
Not with this recipe!

Cinnamon-Sugar Pumpkin Muffins
Makes 12 muffins

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon pumpkin-pie spice or apple-pie spice (I like Penzey's)
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup canned pumpkin
1/4 cup molasses (or more to taste) 
1/3 cup vegetable oil (I used sunflower oil)
2 large fresh eggs

1/4 cup sugar with 1 teaspoon cinnamon (to sprinkle on tops)

Preheat oven to 350°F.
Line muffin tins with papers.
Mix dry ingredients together in bowl.
Mix pumpkin and rest of wet ingredients together in another bowl.
Combine both mixtures and mix until just incorporated.
Fill muffin pan with batter (I use a small ladle to fill cups)
Sprinkle with the cinnamon-sugar.
Bake until puffy and until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into middle of a muffin,
which is about 25 minutes or so.
Cool in pan until you can touch and then take out and cool on rack or countertop.

On Food Blog Fun

What do you get when you put a bunch 

of Arkansas food bloggers in one room for a day?

Great Information,

Healthy Competition,

Great food,

  Cool Swag,

And LOTS of Laughs! 

Whitney & Our little friend

Alison, eating a tomato and sporting the cool aprons they gave us!

Thank you to the great ladies of AR Women Bloggers for setting up Foodie Friday!

Also a big thank you to the sponsors, epecially:

• Ziploc (for the great goodie bag especially the wonderful VersaGlass!)
• Petit Jean Meats (I don't eat pork but my kids will only eat PJ bacon! Did you know they do gift boxes and can even ship a complete Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner?  Also great coffee cake!)
• Yarnell's Ice Cream (Yes, it's back!)  How about this fun picture Whitney took on our way home?

Thank you from- Alison, Sarabeth, Me, and Whitney!

DNA cookies

My daughter wanted me to make cookies for her biology class party and this is what we came up with...

DNA Cookies

I used this same recipe for sugar cookies.  (I used unbleached cane sugar instead of white sugar in the cookies.)  I ended up making royal icing because I was afraid a regular soft icing would not last in the heat and transport.  Hope they like them!

On sweet goodness

I made up a recipe for sweet rolls today because my impatient husband and son wanted sweet rolls "NOW!"  I didn't want to make the short cut recipe I usually do when we want sweet rolls quickly- so I improvised by using the ratios I use on my pizza crust.  They ended up being better than almost all the other recipes we usually use!   After breakfast I had 4 left out of a pan of 15...
(It also made a small pan with 6 small ones in it that I'll freeze.)

The results.....

What I did:

Sweet Cinnamon Rolls with Orange Vanilla Glaze

5 cups flour
add 1/2 stick of butter (melted) and put in mixer with dough hook
On stove warm 2 cups milk
(You want it to be warm, but cool enough to stick your finger in and not be burned if you count to 10)
To this add 3 1/4 teaspoons of yeast and about 1/4 cup of sugar (I use Mexican cane sugar instead of white sugar in everything.)
In a small cup beat 2 eggs
Add milk mixture and eggs to flour mixture and blend. 
If dough is really sticky add enough flour to make it still moist but where you can touch it and
not have sticky fingers (it's okay if it's more on the sticky side now because you can add flour later when your knead.)
Let rise about 15 minutes (would be better to let rise til double, but we are impatient.)
Knead dough on floured surface.  Add flour to make a nice dough if it's sticky.  Knead until you have a pretty, soft dough. 
Roll out into a large rectangle (about 18 x 20)
Brush with melted butter and then sprinkle with cinnamon sugar (you can add nuts or chocolate chips or raisins if you want to.)
Roll up from long side pressing as you go. 
Cut into about 1 inch pieces and place cut side down in a greased baking dish.
Let rise at least another 15 minutes (or ideally until doubled.)
Bake at 350 until light golden brown. 
Pour or brush glaze over rolls while warm.

Glaze
About 1/4 cup of melted butter (more or less)
Add powdered sugar (1-2 cups, again more or less)
thin with orange juice and add about 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla

Green Tomato Goodness

In November, before the first frost hit us, 

Mom decided we should pick all the peppers and tomatoes we could from her beautiful garden. 

She has a beautiful garden, and I didn't realize how many she was talking about until I went to help her pick!

One of many trays...

There must have been four large baskets of tomatoes and probably two full trays like this.  As for peppers we couldn't even pick them all- habaneros, hot Chinese, jalapenos, and more.
We scoured the internet for recipes for green tomatoes and peppers, and ended up mostly just winging it anyway...

Pickled (Dill) Green Tomatoes!

For the pickles we just followed a basic pickle formula (with regular vinegar, not cider) and then added fresh dill, some hot peppers, garlic, peppercorns and sliced green tomatoes then processed them.

Upside Down Pepperoncini!

 She had enough banana peppers to make about five or six jars of pepperoncini (our fave.)  We just pickled these too (with no dill.)

Green Tomato Salsa!

We had so many tomatoes left over and wanted to make a salsa of some kind.  Our favorite salsa is Herdez Tomatillo/Green salsa and we thought, "Why not make a green tomato salsa?"  We only made about three jars of this and it came out so yummy!  Basically it was chopped green tomatoes, jalapenos, chopped onion and garlic, cilantro, a bit of cumin and salt, some lime juice and touch of vinegar and then we cooked it.  I should have written the recipe down!

Our Green Bounty

Our next day we made THE HOTTEST pepper jelly from basically all habanero (aji chombo) peppers and a few jalapenos and Cayenne peppers.  We had to cook it outside on the grill because it was so hot, then processed it inside.  It came out a beautiful golden color with red and green flecks. I just used the pepper jelly recipe on the pectin package.  I swear it's the hottest goodness you have ever tasted. 

 Mom still had a ton of peppers at her house so she made aji chombo sauce (Panamanian hot sauce) basically just aji chombo (habanero) peppers chopped up, vinegar, mustard, chopped garlic, chopped onion, and salt and pepper put into a bottle to sit in the fridge.  Very, very, hot so be wary.