Pumpkin-Caramel Baked Doughnuts

Birthday girl requested pumpkin, so pumpkin she got—and not in any ordinary pumpkin bread sort of way. Because the best kinds of friendships send you to the innovation board, also known as a mesh of Google recipe search results...

...Until you have her favorite form of sweet treat, the doughnut, with a uniquely fall twist. The thick caramel frosting drapes over these warm-spiced cake-y babes with decadence. Bonus points if you can get Snickers crumbs to actually stick to the frosting before it sets, too. 

And heres'a leftover batter solution: Throw in some mini chocolate chips and excess Snickers pieces and bake them as mini muffins for a bonus round of treats to take to yet another gathering of people that week. 

Hey look, this photo actually got treated to natural light. I miss it after 5 p.m. Sad times, this season change brings.

Verdict: Birthday treat win!

Pumpkin Pie Cake

Chapter 1: The Reaction
To: Madoline
From: Coworker
Subject: Yum!!!
Message: That's the best pumpkin cake I've ever had.
(This was copied and pasted from an actual email, for full disclosure.)

Chapter 2: The End Product
Dense, buttery cake.
      Then, pumpkin pie.
            Finally, buttery cinnamon streusal sprinkled on top.
                  All melded together in the oven.

Chapter 3: From Whence It Came
My friend Brianne's aunt's pumpkin cake recipe.
The one she brought to Southern Progress fellow potlucks.
The one made with cake mix.
Tweaked to be from scratch by subbing in parts of some random "homemade cake mix" recipe Google found me.

 

Chapter 4: The Critique

I took this baking project on too late on a school (err, work) night (over-ambition in the kitchen=my downfall in life). And then I had to do math to combine recipes because I wanted to be original (originality for the sake of originality=not always the best idea). And then it was 11:30 p.m. and the top of the cake was STILL not set. And I just wanted to go to bed. So, yeah, I had bias against this cake before the innocent thing made it out of the oven. It ended up tasting sweet and richly dense, yes, but also too much like pumpkin pie for this Thanksgiving-pie hater. I ate a bit, gave away most of it, and then moved on to... chocolate, my one true love. But now I baked something seasonal and something original, so I can check that off my list and move back to the 17,987th variation on chocolate cookies and cakes I can develop.

Also, it was really ugly to photograph. That's why you basically see pictures of plant green and tree/house bright yellow with only a splash of all shades of distasteful browns and oranges, brightened in Photoshop.

 

Loaded Potato Salad+Tailgate

What I Learned about Tailgating this Weekend

What I get excited about:

Loaded  Potato Salad

(a cold version of sour cream+green onion+cheddar+bacon!bacon!bacon! goodness, with some roasted red potatoes hidden in there somewhere)

 recipe at bottom of post

 Football-Style Outrageous Brownies

Oatmeal-Butterscotch Cookies

What my mom gets excited about:

decor, team colors, team-colored jelly beans, orange "spa" water, tablecloths and flowers

All of the above is periphery to what my dad and his friends do when they tailgate sans females most of the season.

This is what the guys got excited about:

Meat! Bacon-Wrapped Scallops

Meat! 

Pork Tenderloin

(And more meat not pictured! Ahi tuna bites, burgers, ham sandwiches, deer sausage, brats.)

 Most eaten non-meat item: 

Grilled red onions, bell pepper and baby portabella mushrooms

 The plate for one of like 15 continous meals: 

Sliced Pork Tenderloin Sandwich with Barbecue Sauce and Grilled Onions/Peppers/Shrooms
(a combo to definitely be repeated)

Morale of the story: We all like to eat good food, so it works out well, especially on a gorgeously 70-degree sunny autumn day. Oh, and everyone else watched and talked about football.

Arugula-Sweet Potato Salad with Blackberry Vinaigrette

October for me meant stopping, a reprieve from travels or otherwise packing a weekend full of activity. It meant going into Saturday with no agenda, which for a planner is kind of scary for some odd reason, and discovering the riches of down time and spontaneity: going for an impromptu Saturday hike, listening to my roommate animate the characters of a children's novel as she read it aloud,  actually sitting down and watching a movie I have been meaning to see since I got it for Christmas last year, creating invitations for a neighbor potluck, reading (oh reading books!), returning to the simple pleasures of cooking for fun.

One particular weekend, this meal evolved with fall favorites sweet potatoes and pork tenderloin, with a lingering taste of summer (frozen blackberries) in a balsamic vinaigrette and bitter arugula, which I paired with my first experimentation with the fig (Sourdough Toasts with Goat Cheese, Figs and Honey --> —delightful).

Best of all, it was shared on the porch with a friend, and then continued as fancy food leftovers for yours truly later in the week.

Why to amend a chef's recipe [Citrus Beet Salad]

To the rest of the food world who turns on cable television more than once every six months, Chris Hastings is a big deal. Key words: Iron Chef.

To the world of critical food snobbery, he is also a big deal. Key words: James Beard.

And while I am certain he lives up to his fame as Best Chef in the South, I do know one thing: he crafts restaurant recipes, not so much friendly-for-the-home kitchen recipes. Or such was the case in my experience.

The "Chef's Garden Beet Salad" trouble started at the grocery store when I was executing the first step of Project Make-a-Recipe-to-in-the-Name-of-Needing-a-Photo-for-the-Paper. Three kinds of beets? Surely one will do. Arugula and frisee? I see mixed baby greens!

Photos for Village Living

And then when I got to the kitchen, it was two kids of olive oil? Why in the world when you can just have one? Fresh orange juice? I have carton of oj in the fridge that surely will do just fine. Fresh thyme? Umm, let's do dried. Lemon and lime juice? I have lemons; they'll do. Individually plate each salad with all ingredients? Salads taste pretty swell tossed en mass in my book.

And then came the necessary evil: reducing 1 cup of orange juice to 3 tablespoons. Is this what chefs do all day --> — wait for-e-ver for juice to reduce to a tiny fraction of its volume?  I just roasted beets for more than an hour, and I thought that was my time splurge. I did in fact wait and wait and wait for the oj to reduce to a thick, dark and delicious syrup. I do not know that I would have the patience for it again when surely just juice would taste good enough for a citrus dressing.

I don't mind spending time in the kitchen on a special project, but this project required cutting corners to avoid spending literally all night to make a salad. Power to chefs, but on this here blog you will find home kitchen recipes. And that is why I dumbed down poor Chris Hastings' recipe.

Disclaimer: This post is in no way meant to belittle the awesome work of Chef Hastings and Hot and Hot. I just felt the need to simplify his recipe when I was making it for personal consumption. His recipe is indeed tasty my way and would probably be all the more so with his much more complex method.

Citrus-Avocado Salsa

Avocado anything is bliss.
Fresh salsa of any kind is bliss.
Citrus in the fall and winter is bliss.

Hence, this is an irresistible combo.

We used "game day" as an excuse to run this recipe in print because this is Alabama, land of living and breathing and eating Roll Tide/War Eagle/anything and everything football.

But in my "counter culture," we ate our fresh and fruity salsa amongst three people, miles from a game,  with no thought of turning on a television. That's the icing to my true food bliss.

Sticky-Bun Pumpkin Muffins

Cinnamon roll meets pumpkin bread meets pecan pie. Leave it to Southern Living to dream up a baked good that wondrous.

This recipe had been calling my name since October. If this blog were a food magazine, now might be too far past fall and holidays to bake pumpkin. But I make all editorial judgements for my kitchen, and I don't care to be perfectly seasonally exact. I wanted these muffins. Plus, I had canned pumpkin to use up from my stock piling a few months ago (that stuff tends to disappear from shelves).

A pecan/butter/brown sugar mixture goes in the bottom of the tins, and you top it with pumpkin batter. Once they cook, you invert the pan to reveal magical mini upside down cakes.

I wasn't sure I could get rid of a whopping 24 decadent pecan-topped muffins at my work meeting, so I made half a batch as the recipe instructed and the other half with more fiber, less sugar, and dried cranberries inside instead of sticky-bun topping.

 And then there was a sinful/healthy variety for the meeting... and for coworker snacks and roommate snacks and then weekend breakfast for my most wonderful Memphis weekend hostess (who had hoped I'd show up with a baked good for breakfast, how lucky). It sounds more generous than reality; I definitely ate a majority of these guys.

Sausage and Apples

In school they teach you to write in complete sentences. 

In my attempts at writing not-for-teachers, I prefer things short. And concise. Short and concise, sometimes incomplete sentences. To be catchy. And add emphasis on the important words.

Addendum: Subheads. I like them.

Memory: Cafe Berlin, Columbia, MO: The kind of hippie-food breakfast place whose menu items make you pause, then delight

Menu item: Apples, garlic, red onion, local andouille sausage, a hint of chili powder and cinnamon cooked in maple syrup and brown sugar.

Re-creation: Sunday brunch with home group ladies

My dinner for the next two nights: This wondrous concoction served atop Sweet Potato Pancakes.

Inspiration for that: Trattoria Centrale appetizer of bread spread with sweet potato puree and topped with apples, pork and other good things I can't recall.

Sweet Potato, Mushroom and Gouda Chowder

Slurping down the first bowl of warm cream-laced soup after jacket weather hits is like curling up under my down comforter with the first escape novel I've picked up in far too long. Hello, stay-inside-more season, I've missed the comforts you bring.

And what better way to welcome you than with mushrooms and sweet potatoes and gouda and bacon? Soup Week at The Kitchn got back in the habit reading its 1,467 daily posts —if nothing else it's worth the screen time to discover links like this.

Now if only there were more time in the day to curl up and read I Capture the Castle for hours at a time with hot chocolate and soup breaks.

This scrumptious chowder is part of my seasonal kick of sweet potatoes and pumpkin and squashes. What fall comfort are you cooking up?

Caramel Apple Cupcakes

If you send Madoline an email with a recipe for Caramel Apple Cupcakes, she will use roommate dinner and her mom's Madoline-sweet-deprived coworkers as excuse to make them. And if she makes them, she will taste test the apple-cinnamon cake and find it quite sweet. And if she finds it quite sweet, she will only put so much uber-decadent caramel icing on top of each cake (as opposed to the Dreamcakes Bakery volume, which is about seven times more than necessary).

And if she only puts so much icing on each cake, she will have pounds and pounds of  luscious caramel icing leftover. And if she has icing leftover, she will make another half batch of mini cupcakes for a block party. And if she only bakes half a batch, she will still have icing leftover.

And if there is still icing leftover, she will set it next to the brownie bites her roommate made. And if she sets it next to the brownies, the brownies will get dunked and disappear.

And if the brownies disappear, someone clever will think to dip Tostito's in the caramel for a sweet-salty snack. And if they dip Tostitos, then they'll try pretzels. And if they try pretzels, the caramel icing will vanish.

Reference (in case you missed it): If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

Autumn Pasta with Butternut Squash, Greens, Bacon, and Brown Butter

Tastes-like-fall butternut squash pairs well in pasta dishes, as I learned last year at this time thanks to some fancy food dinners around Birmingham.

There was the herbed goat cheese ravioli with butternut squash, onions, bacon, shaved parmigiano-reggiano, sage, brown butter and sauteed mustard greens at Satterfield's.  And then a similar butternut-bacon-greens pasta at Bottega Cafe. Both were obvious choices in my order-something-unique-while-I'm-eating-out menu quest and more than pleased my palate.

Butternut squash and mustard greens came home with me from the farmer's market a few weeks ago, and while pondering what to do with my attempts to eat like fall, I remembered how badly I wanted to make my own version of the butternut pasta delight. Delish.

Caramel Italian Cream Cake

This Italian cream cake is good, but with its frosting, oh its creamy caramel frosting, the coconut-pecan cake is divine. At one sitting my grandmother told me no less than four times that it was "so good;" she does love butter more than anyone I know. And the whole family thought it was the best of our treats on our Thanksgiving retreat to the lake.

Caramelizing brown sugar and butter transforms their union into a class of its own. Mix that the caramel mixture with powdered sugar (yes, more sugar) and vanilla, and you'd better make sure someone else is around to help you lick the frosting bowl. If left to lick it on your own, you will not be able stop and hence will create dangerous potential sugar coma conditions. It was necessary to pronounce aloud, "This is so good!" each time I sampled the frosting, if you can call the number of bites I took a "sample."

I had been anxiously awaiting baking this beauty since I had the privilege of tasting it while Southern Living test kitchen was perfecting it. They did get the recipe quite perfect, but the magazine fancified it with cream cheese icing and shaved coconut on the sides. I tweaked the recipe to put more spotlight on the caramel frosting that I can't stop talking about; plus, "basic" homemade layer cakes require enough labor as is.

Spiced Oatmeal-Chocolate Chip Cookies

Idea: A New Cookie Recipe

Requirement: Chocolate

Recipe: Adding the warm spices and bit of orange zest from Smitten Kitchen's Oatmeal, Chocolate Chip and Pecan Cookies to a slightly more chewy, chocolate-filled version of the Quaker Oatmeal box cookie recipe.

Result: A chewy oatmeal-chocolate combination that tastes like fall, perfect for taking to friends the weekend before Thanksgiving.

 The VIP ingredients of this recipe were whole oats and Ghiradelli chocolate. I prefer the texture of whole oats and feel like they are more natural in their slightly less processed state. I felt like splurging on fancy chocolate, but when I taste tested one chip against on Nestle's chip, I found the Ghiradelli slightly richer. It was not as noticeable in cookie dough though.

Note: Many people love these cookies, but they are not the all-around crowd-pleaser that basic oatmeal-raisin or chocolate chip cookies are.

Apple Cake

These sweet-tart Granny Smith apples make the base of the favorite cake of the men in my family. My dad talks of it with enthusiasm that comes close to how I talk about chocolate lava cakes.

The batter looks kind of healthy when you add fresh, crisp apples and nutrient-filled pecans, but don't be fooled.

The final cake is super sweet and moist thanks to our friends sugar and oil. Plus, a warm caramelized glaze seeps into the top of the cake, making half of it that much more moist and sugary-delicious.

Word of Caution: Be sure to cook the cake all the way. Otherwise, it will be apple mush. Even Madoline the baker undercooks things sometimes and has to be careful to perform a toothpick test. Fortunately, I have a brother who is quite fond of apple mush and kept my baking whoops a few years ago from being a total waste.

Honey-Beer Pumpkin Bread

The only more exciting sign of fall than giant pumpkins (these babes were up to 1331 pounds (!) at the Allardt, Tennessee Pumpkin Festival we stumbled upon this weekend) is the warm spices in a slice of fresh pumpkin bread.

My go-to recipe is a Cooking Light one from a couple of years ago that calls for honey beer (or really any beer you have on hand). You can't really taste the beer all that much like you can in beer bread. I mostly like the recipe because it cuts back on the oil a bit and hence is somewhat better for you than your typical recipe. "Light" in no way diminishes the flavor. It's still plenty most and filled of warm fall flavors.

The recipe makes two loaves, so bring the extra to friends or freeze it for future eating. I like to pull chunks out of the freezer and pack it for an afternoon snack.

Like  pumpkin? Try these pumpkin snack recipes.