"The best muffins I've ever eaten"

I love praise, I'm just that narcissistic. I'm not afraid to admit it. So I bake and share with others in hopes of having praise showered upon me. That was the point of the blog in the first place! But I have to say, I got the best reaction from this recipe.

I have a few recipes I absolutely love. My red velvet is probably number one. The vanilla cake ranks pretty high too. But I make my pumpkin loaves every single year without fail and I get heaps of complements on them. The recipe comes out of a Taste of Home book and I've never tried anything else. This isn't exactly health food when you see the ingredient list, but it makes your tummy feel good and that's important too.

PUMPKIN PECAN LOAVES:

1-1/3 c AP flour

3 c sugar

2 tsp baking soda

1-1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg (I was out so I just doubled the cinnamon, but I really prefer less nutmeg than the recipe calls for anyway.)

1 can (15 oz) solid-pack pumpkin (I just measured out 15 oz of my pumpkin goo)

1 c vegetable oil

4 eggs, lightly beaten

2/3 c water

1/2 c chopped pecans (Texan ones preferred)

CARAMEL GLAZE:

1/4 c butter

1/4 c sugar

1/4 c packed brown sugar

1/4 c whipping cream

2/3 c confectioners' sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

In a bowl, combine the first six ingredients. Combine the pumpkin, oil, eggs and water; mix well. Stir into dry ingredients just until combined' fold in the pecans. Spoon int two greased 9x5x3" loaf pans. Bake at 350 for 60-65 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks. For glaze, combine butter, sugars and cream in a saucepan. Cook until sugar is dissolved. Cool for 20 minutes. Stir in the confectioners' sugar and vanilla until smooth. Drizzle over cooled loaves.

I have to say, the star of this recipe really is the glaze. I'll eat that stuff with a spoon if you don't take it away from me. And of course I sprinkle some pecans on the top after I've added the the glaze to the loaves.

My favorite way to make this is in mini loaf pans. They make a great gift size that way. Enough for one person to polish off in a couple of sittings. I made the mini loaves for my mom to give as Christmas gifts one year. I wrapped each loaf and then we put them into some Christmas pottery loaf pans from Michael's. Pretty cute, really yummy.

Since I'm on a cupcake kick here lately, I decided to stick these into cupcake liners and dub them muffins. Those I took to work and passed out to any coworkers I ran into. I caught my boss in her office and gave her one. Less than 15 minutes later, she found me and declared they were the "best muffins I've ever eaten" and then ate another one. :) That's what I like to hear.

Giving Thanks

Seeing as how I had a whole mess of pumpkin goo in the freezer, I had the perfect opportunity to finally get some baking done with it: Thanksgiving! Now I know that this is a time to be with family and all sit around the table and eat turkey and watch football, but we aren't exactly traditional. My Thanksgiving dinner? Steak and Shiner at Saltgrass Steakhouse in Laughlin, Nevada. And it was awesome. Of course that was just a stop on the way to Vegas. The breakfast at the Vegas Hilton is pretty dang awesome, if you want my two cents.

The point of the trip was to head to Death Valley. I'd never been there but I had a great time and got to see some freakin' awesome alluvial fans.

What about baking you say? Oh yes, there was baking when we made it home. We rushed back in time to have Thanksgiving at my favorite astronomer's house. The same annual Thanksgiving dinner that I was forced to bring canned pumpkin pie to last year. BUT!!! Since I had those awesome pumpkins in my freezer, all was well this year. That lovely spot on the top of the pie is due to condensation since I baked the pies that morning and carried them, still warm, to Melissa's.

If you have never had real pumpkin pie, you don't know what you're missing. Seriously, try it next year. Of course, Thanksgiving is really about the food, but the people sharing with you are important too. So thanks for having us out again Melissa! And here's a picture of Kristen and her Thanksgiving herpes (Don't ask, but it's really just hives).

Getting into the Holiday Spirit

I spent an entire afternoon last year calling grocery stores. Why? I needed some pumpkins. I called every single major grocer within a 100 mile radius from my house. Whenever they'd answer, I'd ask for produce, then tell the person on the other end of the line that I was looking for sugar pumpkins. These aren't your Jack-o-lantern pumpkins, they're smaller, full of sugar and meat, and used for pies. I'm a pie snob. I make my own crust (finally got that figured out, but it took a while) and I make my own fillings. No canned stuff for me. Which is why I was on a mission. But it was to no avail. The folks at A.J.'s (a snooty, high-class grocer) weren't much help at all. But the lady from Trader Joe's was super friendly. I learned from her that last year was apparently a bad year for pumpkins. Trader Joe's suppliers couldn't get any in stock at all. And so I brought a pie with canned pumpkin to my friend Melissa's giant Thanksgiving shin-dig, head hung in shame.

So I felt all sorts of giddy when I walked into my normal grocery store the day after Halloween and saw the display of tiny pumpkins. Even with nearly a month before Thanksgiving, I knew I had to have them. Cooking them is almost as easy as opening up a can of "pumpkin." Did you know that most canned pumpkin is not really pumpkin at all, but some other squash? The first step is to cut them in half. And who doesn't like getting all stabby?

You may notice all the pumpkin guts already on the counter. I'm a messy person in general and this project isn't for the clean freaks anyway. But it's all worth it in the end. Of course, the next step is to get out all the goo from the insides.

Once the pumpkins were all cut, I put them face down on a cookie sheet and baked them until they smelled good. That comes out to about 45 minutes or so. How do they smell so cinnamony already? I love the color of the pumpkin here.

The easiest part is getting the good stuff out of the pumpkin skins. You'd think that you should let it cool so that you can scoop out the flesh, but since they're already face down, they easiest way is just to peel the skin off of the still warm pumpkins. Once everything was cool, I ran the pumpkin through a food processor to smooth it all out. Four little pumpkins make an awful lot of goo. Here's the results after getting processed. It'll probably give me two pies with enough left over for pumpkin bread. Awesome. And since I still had nearly a month until Thanksgiving, it all went into the freezer. But I'll have a real pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving this year at Melissa's.