Pumpkin Spice Bars

Well it is feeling like fall here finally. The days have turned cool and damp and there is even a chance of snow on Friday. Not sure that I am ready for that yet, but we will see what comes of it.
With this cooler weather comes my increased need to bake and cook. My favorite things to bake this time of year is anything that contains pumpkin in the recipe: breads, muffins, cookies, pies, soups, you name it. Today was Pumpkin Spice Bars. These are yummy little gems of goodness. By the time they are done cooking your house will smell wonderful and they taste even better. Taking a bite of them is like getting a bit of only the filling in a pumpkin pie, which in my opinion is the best part!
Now this original recipe was not of my creation, but I have changed it over time and think that it is even better than the original. Not to mention, healthier than the original.

Pumpkin Spice Bars

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/3 cups sugar
1 15 oz can pure pumpkin
4 eggs
1 cup apple butter (this is a replacement for oil, if you don't have apple butter you can trade out for oil but will not be as moist)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1) Preheat oven to 350. Mix together flour, baking powder, spice and baking soda. With a mixer beat sugar, pumpkin, eggs and apple butter until smooth. Gradually mix in flour mixture until well combined. Stir in walnuts.

2) Grease a jelly roll pan or 15x10x1 baking pan. Spread the batter in the pan and bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

3) Cool in the pan and once cool you can top with a thinned cream cheese frosting. To thin the cream cheese frosting, if store bought warm in the microwave. If you are making the frosting, thin a small amount with the addition of milk until it is pourable.

The hardest part of this recipe is waiting for the bars to cool off before frosting and diving right in!

Pound Cake with Lemon Pudding and Raspberry Topping

Okay so as promised last week I am finally getting around to posting the recipe for the Pound Cake with Lemon Pudding and Raspberry Topping. This is one of those recipes that came about because I had a pound cake to eat and wanted to "fix" it up somehow. The end result was a yummy and tasty dessert that took almost no time at all to complete. The best part of this is you can use any yellow pound cake recipe or store bought that you like. My recipe calls for lemon juice in the recipe so that is where the idea for lemon pudding came from and I just love the flavor of lemon and raspberries, so there you have it.

So on to the recipe.

Lemon Pudding

1 small box of lemon flavored pudding
1 3/4 cup milk

Mix together until the pudding starts to set and then cover and refrigerate until you are ready to serve.


Raspberry Topping

1 package frozen raspberries (12 oz)
Sugar to sweeten to your taste.

Put the frozen raspberries, 1/4 cup water and sugar in a small sauce pan and heat until bubbly and the raspberries breakdown and a sauce forms. Add sugar as needed to get the sweetness that you like. Let this cool down until it is just warm.

To serve the dessert, slice the cake and top with the lemon pudding and then spoon on some of the warm raspberry topping and enjoy!

Pioneer Woman Pineapple Upside Down Cake

One of my favorite places to get ideas and recipes to cook is out of my Pioneer Woman cookbook. If you have never had the chance to try one of her recipes, do yourself a favor and take a side trip to her web site http://thepioneerwoman.com/ and see what you like (there is plenty!) A fellow blogger, Pinke Post is putting together a linky party in which you post your favorite Pioneer Woman recipe and the link back to her site in celebration of Pioneer Woman's new cooking show premiering tomorrow on the Food Network. It just so happens that last night I made Pineapple Upside Down Cake using her recipe, and watched everyone fight over getting a piece, so I'm posting the recipe for everyone to enjoy!



Ingredients

2 1/ cups flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 cups sugar
1 stick butter
1/4 cup shortening
1 1/2 cups milk
2 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1- 20oz can sliced pineapple, 2 tablespoons juice kept back
1 1/3 cups brown sugar
Maraschino cherries


1) Preheat the oven to 350

2) Make the cake batter in a mixer. Mix the flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, 1/2 stick of the butter, shortening, milk, eggs, vanilla and the 2 tablespoons pineapple juice.

3) Mix until well combined.

4) Melt the other 1/2 of the stick of butter in a 12 inch cast iron skillet over medium heat. Make sure that the butter is melted and covers all of the pan. Sprinkle the brown sugar over the melted butter evenly and let the butter soak into the sugar and start to bubble.

5) Turn off the heat at this point and remove the pan from the heat. Put the pineapple slices on top of the brown sugar and the cherries in the center of the pineapple.

6) Slowly pour the cake batter over the pineapples so you don't move the cherries around.

7) Bake for 30-40 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean of the center of the cake.

8) When done take a knife around the edge of the pan and place a metal cake plate upside down on the skillet and turn everything upside down. Remember to use hot pads!

If any of the cake sticks just use the knife to take it out of the pan and put back with the rest of the cake, this has happened to me, but everyone is so busy trying to get a piece they never notice.

I would have added pictures of the final product, but it is all gone! So you will just have to trust me that this is a yummy dessert!

Something Sweet

Well the snow is back again. Woke up to a few inches already on the ground this morning and more coming down just as fast as it could manage. The sun has been out some this afternoon so some of the snow has started to melt, but there is still plenty on the ground. So with the colder temp outside came the desire for one of my favorite winter dinners: Pinto Beans and Ham hocks. This is a dish that my mom would spend all day cooking in the winter and the house would smell so good by the end that you just could not wait to eat. While my mom would take the long road to the end dish, I'm all about making good food: quick food. So in that case I use canned pinto beans, normally what I have canned in the fall but if not store bought ones work also. I have also traded out the ham hocks for ham steak, so that the whole thing can be cooked in about an hour from start to finish instead of having to start the night before soaking the beans and cooking all the next day.

So once the ham and beans were on and doing their thing I got to thinking what else to fix for dinner: dessert. And for dessert tonight Cream Puffs. I love these little golden gems of goodness and the fact that they take almost no work is even better. They may look all fancy and hard to make but with a few ingredients that most all of us keep on hand you can whip up a great dessert in about 40 minutes (this includes the 30 minutes they cook).

Cream Puffs   makes 12 puffs

1 cup water
1/2 cup butter
1 cup flour
4 eggs
1 box instant vanilla pudding (8 servings size)

1) In a sauce pan add the water and butter and heat until the butter is melted and the water is boiling. As soon as the water is boiling add all the flour and stir until it is mixed well and forms into a ball. Turn off the heat and remove pan and let the dough cool for 10 minutes.

2) Add eggs, 1 at a time making sure to mix in the egg completely before adding the next egg. Don't worry about over mixing this dough as it is important to make sure the eggs are stirred in before adding the next.
Spray a cookie sheet and drop 12 large tablespoons of dough on it and bake at 400 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes until the tops are just golden brown.

3) Once the puffs are cooked, cool them on a wire rack. If you are making these ahead of time you can store them in a plastic bag in the fridge for a few days at this stage.  When you are ready to serve them cut the top off the puff and remove the soft dough from inside (this forms the hollow shell to fill). Make the pudding according to box directions for pudding and fill each puff with the pudding, place top back on the puff. You can then top each with melted chocolate, shifted powder sugar, warmed chocolate frosting or your favorite topping.

So while the end result may look hard to achieve, no one needs to know that it really is not all that hard!

Hope you enjoy!