Pumpkin Pie Bars

My husband is currently on the couch complaining that he is too tired from all of our fall activities. He did not however complain about this fall activity - not at all. This is a deliciously simple twist on the classically addictive pumpkin pie. 

Made into bar form and then topped with a crumb topping, these pumpkin pie bars are just like the pie - absolutely addictive. They're spiced just like the original so they won't fail to bring back the flavors of fall. One bite of these will remind you of how wonderful the changing fall colors look and how refreshing the crisp fall air smells. They are so good and they are so fall!

They smell so good baking in the oven as the crust bakes and gives off that delicious pastry smell. Then when the filling bakes, it gives off that autumnal scent of pumpkins, cinnamon, and soon to be yummy in everyone's belly. As usual, I recommend enjoying with a cup of warmed apple cider.

Yup, in case you can't tell. I'm still in love with fall.

Pumpkin Pie Bars

Adapted from somethewiser

For the crust

1 1/3 cup all purpose flour

1/2 cup brown sugar

8 tablespoons butter at room temperature

For the filling

8 oz room temperature cream cheese

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup pumpkin puree

2 eggs, slightly beaten

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. In your food processor, combine everything for the crust and just pulsate a few times until your mixtures resembles breadcrumbs. Reserve 2/3 of these crumbs for your topping. Take the remaining crumbs and press them evenly into a 8x11 (or around that size) baking dish. Bake this bottom layer for 15 minutes and allow to cool. It should look just slightly browned (and smell completely yummy). 

For the filling, combine all of your ingredients into your food processor and blend until completely smooth. Pour over your baked crust and then use your reserved crust crumbs to sprinkle on top for a crumb topping. Bake again at 350 for another 30-35 minutes or until the filling is firm and will withstand to cutting. 

Let your bars cool at room temperature and then cut into them! They'll be delicious, I promise!

Enjoy!

Sam

Cinnamon Raisin Swirl Bread

Well this was adorable.

Sam doesn't like/can't make yeast breads. Elyse loves/is awesome at making yeast breads. So we had a cooking lesson!!! We each donned on our own little aprons and Elyse did some teaching.

...and it was worth it. We'll both be making lots of breads now. Look at this! It was amazing to watch the loaves go through two risings, and fill the inside with sugar and then see the swirls of sugar when we ate them...everyday...for only a few days (because then it was gone).

These loaves were puffy, perfect, sweet, really hit a spot that only homemade bread can hit.

I mean, honestly. Who isn't a sucker for that?

Trust me, in keeping with the name of this blog - this cinnamon raisin bread isn't some wimpy white bread loaf with some raisins in it! It's sweet, it's sugary, it is dessert bread. It is worth making! Dare I say, eat it with a glass of warmed apple cider? Perfect fall snack!

Cinnamon Raisin Swirl Bread
Makes 2 loaves

For the bread
2/3 cup warm water (110 degrees F)
1-1/4 (0.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
2 eggs
1/3 cup butter, melted and slightly cooled
1 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
5-6 cups flour (half of which should be bread flour)
1 cup raisins

For the cinnamon sugar filling
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
3 tablespoons butter, melted

Combine 2/3 cup water with yeast and a couple tablespoons of the sugar. Set your remaining sugar aside for later. Set your yeast aside and watch it puff up and grow! This will take about 10 minutes depending on how warm your kitchen is. Meanwhile, combine eggs, 1 cup water, and melted butter. Combine 3 cups of flour, the rest of the sugar and salt. Add in your yeast mixture, which should be nice and frothy by now. Mix in the egg and butter mixture and stir in the rest of your flour until you have a pliable dough.

Knead for 5-10 minutes and allow your dough (which you can divide in two) to rise to about twice it's size in a warm place. Try the microwave! This should take about an hour.

Once your dough has doubled, punch it down and knead the raisins into the dough. This way you get beautiful raisins all throughout the bread, not just in the swirls! Roll dough balls into a rectangle so that the width side of the rectangle matches the length of your bread pan. We went for about 1/2 inch thick and it worked perfectly.

Spread the melted butter onto the rectangles and sprinkle liberally with cinnamon sugar. If you really like your bread sugary you can always add more! Roll your dough up from the width side until you reach the other end of the rectangle (think like a jelly roll, or a ho ho!). For pictures, see Elyse's post: here

Throw these guys into your bread pans that have been coated with some butter and let them rise one more time!

Finally, bake for about 30-40 minutes in a 350 degree oven until golden brown and sounds hollow! IT IS SO GOOD!!!! If you want you can drizzle with some confectioner's sugar glaze too, as you can see we did (depends on your sweet tooth).

Enjoy!

Elyse & Sam

Caramel Apples

Apples smothered with delicious homemade caramel...what could be better on a fall afternoon? The ingredients are quite basic. The only thing that really comes in handy is a digital thermometer, because it takes the guess work out of cooking until "soft ball stage." Just throw all the ingredients in the pan and cook until your thermometer reads 246 F. Add apples and enjoy!

Based on this recipe.

Ingredients
8 apples, washed and dried
8 chopsticks or popsicle sticks
2 cups of packed light brown sugar
1 3/4 cups heavy cream
3/4 cup corn syrup
2 tablespoons butter
1.5 teaspoons salt

For the caramel:
1. In a heavy pot (I used a copper pot), combine light brown sugar and the rest of the ingredients through the salt.
2. Set heat to medium and cook until it reaches 246 F. A digital thermometer really does work best to monitor the temperature accurately. The mixture will be very bubbly so be careful!
3. Take pot off heat. Skewer your apples with the chopsticks/popsicle sticks. Swirl the apples into the caramel and place on a heat proof plate or baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

4. You could drizzle with chocolate, dip in chocolate chips or chopped nuts...whatever you want!

Enjoy!

                                                                                                                        ~Elyse

Nutella Stuffed Brown Butter Cookies

Sooooo this happened. 

These cookies are amazing. Their butter components are browned and thus giving the dough an uh-maize-ing nutty aroma to it. Seriously, amazing.

Then in goes not one, but two types of chocolate chip. Then they're stuffed.with.nutella. 

Reminiscent of the red velvet cookies of yore, these stuffed cookies are a chocolate-y, nutty, amazing, bite of delight.

And that's not all, then they're topped with sea salt - giving you that sweet and salty combination that we all know and love. So good, they're deliciousness can only be described by taste, words just don't do it justice!

Nutella Stuffed Brown Butter Cookies
Adapted from: ambitiouskitchen

2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter
1 1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg and 1 egg yolk
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon plain greek yogurt
3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
1 jar nutella
sea salt (for sprinkling) - optional

1. Brown the butter: in a small saucepan, heat your 2 sticks of butter on medium heat while constantly whisking. The butter will turn foamy, and then clear. Shortly after, the sides and bottom of your saucepan will start to be coated with a brown colored butter product and your saucepan will start to smell like toasted, nutty, caramel, autumn goodness (I was so happy to smell this smell). As soon as this happens, turn off the heat and pour your butter in a bowl to let it cool for a few minutes.

2. Make the dough: once your butter has cooled a bit, add in your sugars. Then drop in the egg, extract, and yogurt. Mix until well incorporated. Add in your flour, baking soda, and salt. Fold in your two chocolates and chill for 2 hours in the fridge.

3. Stuffing the cookies: once your dough is slightly chilled, take out a whopping tablespoon or so and flatten the dough out into little pancakes into your hand. Then, drop some nutella in the middle. I used a 1/4 teaspoon measuring spoon to dollop some into the cookie. Carefully fold over the sides of the cookie dough making a little nutella dumpling. The key is to make your cookie pancake nice and big, but not too thin. That way when you roll the dough around the nutella, you'll ensure a good seal.

4. Baking & salting the cookies: bake the cookies about 1 inch apart in a 375 degree oven for about 9 minutes. Take them out even if they don't look quite done and let carry over cooking do the rest. As soon as they are out, sprinkle with a little bit of salt and press down the tops of the cookies to flatten (and pressing in the salt as well!) with the back of a spoon! Let them cool and then...

5. Eating the cookies: just make sure you lick any residual nutella off your fingers.

Enjoy!!

Sam

Vegan Apple Spice Cupcakes

To continue my infatuation with fall: more apple posts! This time, I used a recipe from an awesome vegan book gifted to me from the wedding. These cupcakes are light, fluffy, and healthy. Best part? They are SO fall!

I adapted the recipe to coat the apples in another layer of spice making these guys delicious delicious delicious!

Packed full of flavor these guys were originally supposed to be made with a caramel topping but I took a trick that I saw my new brother and law do (hi Andy!) and sprinkled the top with brown sugar mixed with a little bit of oil to maintain that sugar-y crunch.

See that hole in the top of that muffin? That was a sugar crater. This didn't happen to the other ones, but I thought it was pretty awesome.

Yay! More autumn baking! I made two batches of these during the week, the hubby was such a fan. AND since they're light on calories, you can essentially eat them nonstop...

Apple Spice Cupcakes
Adapted from Veganomicon

For the apples
3 apples (peeled, cored, and diced into little pieces)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1 tablespoon flour
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon canola oil/vegan margarine/pat of butter (shhh don't tell the vegans)

Toss your apples in the spices and flour. Heat over medium high heat the brown sugar and oil/butter until slightly bubbling. Add in your apples and cook until caramelized, most of the liquid has been cooked off, and apples are soft (about 10 minutes). Your little apple pieces will look like fall in a pot! Remove from heat and let cool.

**Note: you can use more/less apple depending on how apple-y you want your cupcakes to be. Feel free to experiment!

For the cupcakes
1 cup soy milk
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/3 cup canola oil
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Mix together 1 cup soy milk and lemon juice. Let it sit for a minute and it will curdle (really?!? really. It's awesome). Add in the oil, sugar and vanilla. Sift together all your spices (double spice layer!), flour, and baking soda and powder. Incorporate into the milk mixture.

For the topping
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (I love cinnamon, can you tell?)
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon canola oil

Mix together all these ingredients. The brown sugar should look just slightly moistened.

Putting it all together: Preheat the oven to 350 and line your muffin tin with cupcake liners. Now, fold in your cooled apple squares into your cupcake mixture. It will look amazing! Fill your cupcake liners almost completely full. These guys do not rise much so don't worry about leaving too much room in the cupcake tin. Top with your topping and bake for about 20 minutes.

Cool on a rack and enjoy!!

So delicious and so fall!


Sam

Apple Hand Pies

I. Love. Fall.

I especially love apple picking, apple cider, and then coming home to make tons of apple baked goods. Ideally this would be done with crisp fall air, fall boots, and a colorful scarf. Alas - the weather was more summer today but I still got to apple pick and apple bake!

My first apple creation was these little apple hand pies. They're so adorable and delicious. They're just like an apple pie, but smaller and hand-held. Additionally, to fit the filling into these guys the apples are diced instead of sliced as in a pie. That way, you are guaranteed to get lots of apples in every bite.

These guys were full of the flavors of fall. Nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, ginger. MmmMMmm the house smelled delicious!

The best part was brushing the tops of these adorable pies with egg and then sprinkling them with large sanding sugar crystals. Absolutely gorgeous, flaky, and yummy! More apple and fall posts to come!!

Apple Hand Pies

Adapted from thefauxmartha.com

For the crust:

You can either make your crust from scratch as detailed in one of our older pie recipes, may I suggest Elyse's pie crust-off post: here

OR you can do what I did, use store bought crust! you'll need 2 crusts. 

For the filling:

About 3 apples of your choosing (mine were picked right off the tree!)

1/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

pinch of salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon cloves

1/8 teaspoon ginger

For the topping:

1 egg slightly beaten

Sanding sugar (optional but recommended) 

Preheat oven to 375. Peel, core, and dice your apples. I would recommend dicing them pretty small so that the pies fold over easily and so that you get lots of apple in each pie. Add in the remaining filling ingredients into your apples. 

Roll out your pie crust to about a 9X9 inch circle (or use store bought) and cut out circles about 4 inches in diameter and 1/8 inch thick. You can use a smaller or larger cutting utensil depending on how large/small your want your pies to be. Ideally a biscuit cutter would work best, but I just used the rim of a glass. You can be creative and use whatever you'd like!. 

For each circle, put a dollop of apple filling in one half and spread some egg wash along the edges of the same half. Fold over the unused side of your crust to make a semi-circle. Crimp the edges with a fork. Wash the top of the pie with some egg and then sprinkle on some sanding sugar. Finally, cut a slit or two in each pie to give the filling some room to spread. Repeat until you are out of dough or filling. 

Bake your hand pies for about 20-25 minutes or until the crust is golden brown and your filling is bubbling. Take them out and let them cool for a bit before eating...lots of them. 

Enjoy!

Sam

Cardamom Sweet Rolls

A light and fluffy, fragrant and delicious sweet roll, with the delightful scent of both cinnamon and cardamom. Plus, they’re really adorable!

Cardamom Sweet Rolls

1 packet dry yeast

½ cup milk, around 105 degrees Farenheit (watch the temperature or you may kill the yeast!)

¼ cup sugar

1 teaspoon cardamom

2 ½ tablespoons soft butter

½ teaspoon salt

1 egg

2 cups flour (I used half bread flour)

Filling

1 ½ to 2 tablespoons soft butter

2 to 3 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon cardamom

Recipe developed from eat, live, run 

Dissolve the yeast in the milk with a few tablespoons of the sugar. Set aside for about 5 to 10 minutes while you get the rest of the dough ready. This is called proofing the yeast, which ensures that you’ll have adequate rising power. It should bubble up several inches.

In a large bowl, combine the rest of the sugar, cardamom, butter, salt, and egg.  Add the proofed yeast. Start adding the flour about ½ cup at a time, stirring until it’s incorporated each time. Towards the end, you can start kneading the flour in until a dough that doesn’t stick to your hands forms. Knead for about 5 to 10 minutes.  You’ll end up with a smooth and elastic dough ball.

Lightly butter the dough ball and let it rise in the big bowl for two hours in a warm place. It should double in size!

Punch the dough down and roll it out with a rolling pin into a large rectangle. Mine ended up being about 12 x 14 inches.  Smear the butter evenly over the rectangle.  Combine the rest of the filling ingredients and sprinkle evenly over the butter-covered rectangle.

Roll the rectangle up, and cut into 1 inch slices with a sharp knife. Place on a well floured baking sheet.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes at 350 F.

You could put a little glaze or frosting on them, or enjoy as they are. They are especially delicious warm from the oven. Enjoy! 

~Elyse