Brown butter maple pumpkin bread. I am in dire need of a weekend morning butler.
Specifically for the duties of coffee and coffee cake. It would greatly improve my mornings. Andrew, I hope you’re reading this, in case, um, you need Hannukah gift ideas, a morning butler would be amazing! A typical weekend morning in our household goes a little like this. Around seven o’clock, my body decides that it no longer wants to be asleep.
Pumpkin Pie Pop Tarts with maple glaze. I didn’t know Pumpkin Pie Pop Tarts existed before I thought them up and went running to my kitchen.
Turns out they do exist… and they existed all over my kitchen counter before they stopped existing because I ate them all. Ok. Not true. I didn’t eat them aalllll. I shared… but I really didn’t want to. Kinda cool, right!? Just so we’re clear, what we’re dealing with here is two squares (ok.. yea.. rectangles) of buttery dough, stuffed with spiced pumpkin pie filling. Pumpkin pie used to be on the list of things that I hated… along with the first day of school, boys, eggplant and spiders. It would seem that pumpkin pie has grown on me. Pumpkin Pie Bread Pudding with Bourbon Icing. For all of you jokers out there who think that all pumpkin consumption should cease and desist immediately after the post-Thanksgiving tryptophan haze has cleared…all I have to say is this: they don’t call it WINTER squash for nothing.
And to be fair, it really is one of the few bright {orange} spots in the winter vegetable consortium. Uh, literally…seeing as how the entire root vegetable melange is about as pale beige as an Upper East Side private school. Which is not to say that I have anything against rutabagas, turnips, or parsnips (celery root, though – work of the devil). But… it all comes down to aesthetics. And if you’ve ever failed at tried photographing a plate of off-white chunks in such a way that people actually want to eat it…then you’ll understand from which part of my {traumatized} subconscious my love of winter squash arises.
That being said, this bread pudding is very…brown with a drizzle of white on top. And yet, still totally scrumptious-looking. Deep breaths. Ingredients. Pumpkin Chai Tarts from The Stephanie Inn. Last week i was one of the privileged few bloggers invited to Oregon to tour egg farms as a part of the Good Egg Project.
It was such an amazing time – and completely involves a separate post all its own, so stay tuned for that! I loved meeting my fellow bloggers…we were all moms who love food and love blogging, and doing our best for our families. I feel so blessed to have been a part of the group. After our events were over and many of us had returned home, I rented a car and drove myself to the coast, as my flight was a red-eye and I had LOTS of time to kill. I’ve never been out west, and the Oregon Coast has been a dream of mine for AGES. What child of the 80’s didn’t love The Goonies? Upon my arrival in Cannon Beach, I literally found myself gasping. Located on a fantastic stretch of beach, with an amazing view of Haystack Rock, the Stephanie is hands down one of the best Inns I have ever checked in to. It’s the treasure at the end of the map. Pumpkin bread pudding. Here is a recipe that every single person should have in their arsenal, and I couldn’t be happier that it is now in mine.
After a week of flan that never set and floppy, leaky quiche crusts, there are no words for the serenity brought on by a recipe with TWO steps. Heck, the entire set of instructions tops out around 50 words. It was so easy that despite being at my wit’s end after Tuesday night’s fiasco, I made it anyway. Burrowing our spoons into still warm, bourbon-spiked (like I could resist) sweet fall comfort was heavenly, and as I chewed on those buttery bread cubes and pondered the ginger’s edginess, memories of cooking failures fell away, and there was just this, a blissful and eerily wholesome calm.
There is utter genius is combining two of life’s great pleasures, baked French toast and pumpkin pie, into something you could as easily eat for dessert as a decadent brunch side dish. Pumpkin Bread Pudding Adapted from Gourmet Magazine, October 2007. Bourbon pumpkin cheesecake. My sharp-eyed husband caught this bourbon pumpkin cheesecake recipe while I was — typically — flipping through a Gourmet magazine last year.
Although it was a total hit at Thanksgiving, my fleeting recipe attention span struck again this year, but as I began hunting for a new and different fall-themed cheesecake it was made clear I’d still be welcome at the table with something else — just a little less so. Like any good newlywed, last year I made two cakes — one for the family we would spend the afternoon with, and one for the family that had reserved our evening shift. I had intended to do the same this year until I realized that I’d left the base to one of my springform pans at my parents. Already having two batters and crumb crusts prepared, I cursed several times, refilled my wine glass and decided I’d try to make twelve cupcake-sized cheesecakes with the second batter.
(Why oh WHY did I not buy these the fifteen times I have seen them at the store and fawned over them?