I’m feeling a little down right now, as this October Snowstorm and the impending power outages across New Jersey have managed to put a huge damper on my Halloween plans.  Anyone who knows me is aware of the fact that Halloween is my favorite holiday, and one of the things that I love to do every year is cook a Halloween dinner for my family.  Since the power has been out in my house since Saturday afternoon, I’m going to have to scratch the plans I had for tonight.  No Witch Hat Calzones, no Halloween Oreo Cupcakes.  Sigh!

Not too be too much of a Debbie Downer, I luckily did get the chance to do some Halloween baking last weekend for Brendan and Christine’s Halloween Party. I had been dying to try out Bakerella’s Eyeball Cakepops ever since I saw them on her blog, and I also had a special request from Christine for the Pumpkin Monkey Bread I blogged about previously.  I cleared my Friday night and dedicated hours to getting these babies ready for the Saturday night party.

These Eyeball Cakepops were the HARDEST baking project I have ever taken on.  Nothing seemed to go right, from the size of the cakepops to running out of the candy coating.  One word of advice for anyone who wants to take these (or any cakepop) on: DO NOT USE THE EDIBLE PENS.  I don’t know what Bakerella uses in her photos, but they are not edible pens (Sharpies?).  I got through one pop before they stopped writing on the pops altogether.  Instead, go with some red gel and colored icing.  Worked like a charm.  I’m glad I stuck it out and finished these, because they were a huge hit.

I won’t say too much about this, as I just blogged about it.  I used the same exact recipe, but made it “spooky” by adding some Halloween sprinkles and witches fingers.

I hope everyone has a Happy Halloween! Spend it making some tasty treats, since I can’t ;)

Eyeball Cakepops Recipe

Pumpkin Monkey Bread Recipe

I don’t fully understand where or how monkey bread got its name, but I do know that I’m in love with the concept.  I’ve been wanting to make monkey bread for a while now, and I wouldn’t be me if the thought of adding pumpkin didn’t push me over the edge.  

I had a lot to get done yesterday, but I knew I had to bake since I spent all last weekend at Justin and Genevieve’s wedding. I woke up early to make this because I loved both the idea of starting my day by making the house smell amazing and the idea of giving my family something sweet to snack on all weekend.  I definitely made them happy with this one!

For those of you that have never made Monkey Bread before, it can be a time-consuming process.  As with any yeast-based dough, it needs at least two hours to rise twice.  But it’s worth it because it’s SO fun! You basically cut the dough into little balls, rolls each one in butter and cinnamon sugar, and layer them in a bundt pan. When the dough rises for a second time, the pieces come together and form the cake (see above). After you bake it, you flip it upside down, and you’re left with a perfect pull-apart cake! When finished, this cake was absolutely gorgeous and the best word to describe its taste would be ADDICTIVE.  Each piece is almost like a pumpkin donut hole.

A word of advice: the maple glaze in this recipe definitely needs a little milk to thin it out, and the cake only needs a drizzle of it to enhance it. 

Have fun making this one, and then watch your family devour it over the course of a day!

Recipe

Even though I made these a few weeks ago (and of course never got around to writing about them), they were SO good that I knew I needed to spread the word about their wonderfulness.  As soon as I saw this recipe on Gingerbread Bagels, I knew that I’d be dropping all plans and making them that weekend.  As some of you may know, I’m a Halloween fanatic.  I love being scared, getting decked out in creative costumes, and the overall fall atmosphere.  Unsurprisingly, I also love the candy and sweets.

When I was younger, seeing Halloween Oreos on the supermarket shelves always signaled the beginning of the season to me.  I don’t care what anyone says— they just TASTE different.  So when I came across a recipe that incorporated these neon orange cookies into both the cake AND frosting, I was sold.

I had a really fun time making these, which was great because I gave up a Saturday night to try them out.  It was my first time making a buttercream frosting and as nerdy as this sounds, I loved turning on my KitchenAid mixer for 10 minutes and watching the icing transform into something fluffy and beautiful.  And boy was that 10 minutes worth it- this was some of the best frosting I’ve ever had.  The Oreos really add something.

I won’t lie and say that these were perfect.  Although the taste was definitely spot on, I had a tough time getting them to look the way I wanted them to.  I wanted them to be over-the-top Halloween, but two things went wrong.  First, the orange gel food coloring I had somehow hardened and wasn’t very useable.  Second, the piping tip I had was big, but not big enough to allow chunks of Oreos to pass through, so I had to resort to the unwieldy spatula method.  However, these were SO good that I would make another attempt at getting them to absolute perfection.  Maybe for Halloween?

Recipe

In a move that probably comes as a surprise to no one, I’ve fallen slightly behind on my blog.  I made these beauties last weekend, but never got around to posting about them.  However, these are COMPLETELY worth the wait! I have to be honest that, to date, I’ve played it a little safe in my baking.  Besides my masterpiece Pumpkin Cheesecake from last fall, I’ve mostly stuck to muffins, breads, and cookies— things that I knew I could pull off.  I wanted to step it up a notch and go slightly outside of my comfort zone, so stumbling upon this recipe for Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls proved to be perfect timing.  Besides that, my sister took one look at these and BEGGED me to make them.  When someone asks me to make something, I usually oblige.

Luckily, I had zero slip-ups in putting these together.  While they were pretty time consuming, a lot of that time was spent waiting for the dough to rise, so I had plenty of time to use Sunday for its other purpose- watching football.  Also, the actual steps that I had to take were relatively straight forward and easy.  

To say these were a huge hit is an understatement! They were gone by the next day, which meant that I didn’t get to share the love with my co-workers.  That’s probably for the best, because these were at their best when fresh and warm from the oven.  I’m glad I took the advice of Lindsey from Gingerbread Bagels (where I got this recipe from) and went all out by making a cream cheese frosting to spread on top.  Without it, they would have really fallen short.  And who wants to be healthy when they’re eating a cinnamon roll anyways?

Recipe

Being that I woke up in South Jersey this morning, and the first Giants game of the season was on in the afternoon,  I didn’t think I’d be baking anything at all this weekend.  I had grand plans to go a little outside of my comfort zone with a recipe I’ve been dying to try, but it just wasn’t in the cards.  However, I knew I had to make SOMETHING or I’d be breaking my promise to myself the second week in, so I decided it would probably be a good idea to use up the canned pumpkin that I had leftover from the Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins.  A quick search on one of my favorite food blogs, Pinch My Salt, and voila — I found this Pumpkin Spice Cake, which I just so happened to have all of the ingredients for.

It’s hard to beat a classic like this.  The sour cream made the cake amazingly moist, and it tasted perfect with a cup of Pumpkin coffee. My co-workers will be a bunch of happy ladies tomorrow morning…

Recipe

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’s actually fall again! Time for hot coffee, full Friday’s at work, and everything pumpkin. Also time for me to start blogging again, I’ve (once again) decided. It wasn’t so much the blogging that I stopped this summer, it was sort of the cooking all together.  I was busier than I’ve ever been, and when I cooked I tended to stick to light, uninspired meals.  Now that the weather is getting cool again, I’m busting out my KitchenAid Mixer and bringing back my quest to bake something every week.  And let’s be honest, most of them will be of the pumpkin variety.

My challenge with baking is that sometimes I’ll make something and it will sit in the kitchen until it gets thrown out.  Not because it’s bad, but because my family will decide that they’re back to “low carb” or watching what they eat.  Yes, we’re all very much alike.  That’s why I decided to ease back into my culinary groove by making something that I know everyone will be OK with eating.  I could have gone with sugary Spiced Pumpkin Bars (and those will come, promise), but I decided that everyone, especially my sister, would love Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Muffins.  Relatively simple, but definitely something that brings excitement about Fall being here.

Sure enough, as I write this, Marissa has already had 2, maybe 2.5.  I’ll be taking these to the office with me for breakfast this week.

Recipe

Sometimes when I’m home alone (meaning no parents or siblings, but excluding Keenan) with a clean kitchen, I get the urge to spontaneously make some sort of dish or dessert. Usually it’s a dessert, since we always have the basics on hand.  On Tuesday night I noticed that we had a bag of apples, and I started to crave apple crisp.  I know it’s usually a fall dish, but I hadn’t gotten a chance to make it this year since I was so focused on pumpkin.  

Knowing that it was just me and Keenan in the house, and that a lot of food tends to go to waste during the holidays, I decided to look up a recipe for individual apple crisps.  I found an amazing looking one from All You on MyRecipes.com and started baking right away.  They were SO easy to make!

The result smelled incredible and tasted even better. ESPECIALLY with some vanilla ice cream on top.

Recipe

Halloween is my absolute favorite holiday, so I usually go all out for it every year.  Unfortunately I didn’t have any solid plans this year, so I didn’t get to dress up, which was pretty depressing for me.  However, I did get to make my annual Halloween dinner, and I definitely stepped it up a notch by expanding the menu and trying some new things.  Check out all the pictures of my spooky dishes, and use the (selected) recipes below to celebrate next year!

Witch Hat Calzones

Creature Chips

Tombstone Cupcakes

What’s a girl to do when she has half a can of pumpkin leftover from making Pumpkin Chiffon Cake? Bake up some Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies of course! They’re not very creative, but they’re so yummy and comforting.  I’ll be bringing these into the office tomorrow for all of my DeVries PR girls, and I know they’ll appreciate them :)

Recipe 

This week I started going through all of my food magazines and ripping out any pumpkin recipe that I could find.  While I was doing that, I came across a recipe in Every Day with Rachael Ray for Pumpkin Chiffon Cake.  I was feeling a little soft around the edges that day, and I saw that it was light and lo-calorie like an Angel Food Cake, so I decided to go for it.  To me, the selling point was that even though most of the cake was made up of egg whites, it still looked dense enough to be satisfying.

Sure enough, I was right.  I’ve been eating this Pumpkin Chiffon Cake all week and I am SO happy with it.  It has the perfect pumpkin flavor, and I don’t feel weighed down after having a slice.  Plus, it was highly entertaining to make my first cake where I had to hang it upside down for an hour and a half after baking :) I highly recommend this cake for those weeks when you’re in need of a break from all the heavy, cold-weather food, but still want something seasonal.  Or anytime at all!

Recipe (I’ll have to post this one a little later, as the magazine’s website still hasn’t posted it.)