Pumpkin Pie Muffins

I needed to make something to donate to a bake sale. Given my ongoing need to use up various ingredients, I was able to finish off a can of pumpkin puree with these Pumpkin Pie Muffins from Mostly Muffins, a classic (published in 1984) by Barbara Albright and Leslie Weiner. These are pretty much what they would seem to be: muffins with the flavors reminiscent of pumpkin pie, especially those spices: cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg. These muffins also have chopped pecans and dried cranberries (I strayed from the dates called for in the original recipe). I also sprinkled a little cinnamon sugar atop each muffin before I baked them.

Cookie Day 2007

Many years ago, we used to host a holiday party featuring only desserts. It was a lot of fun, but a grueling amount of work. There's nothing like making cookies for the holidays, though, and I was glad to learn that my running pal Ryan also liked to bake. A few years ago, we got together for our first-ever Cookie Day, a preholiday celebration of flour, sugar, butter, eggs, and chocolate.

The first two years of Cookie Day were major throw-downs. Last year, the first pan went in the oven at around 10:15 a.m., and the last batch of cookies didn't come out til around midnight. Although this Cookie Day format was fun, this year we decided to approach things differently. Each of us prepared a bunch of doughs ahead of time to bake off on Cookie Day. All in all, this worked out really well, making for a far-less frantic day. In the end, we prepared only a few "live" doughs; the rest was stuff we'd done in advance.



Ryan brought along a variety of items:

• Chocolate-peanut butter pinwheels
• Caramel-pecan biscotti
• Chocolate sticks (a biscotti-like chocolate cookie)
• Magic in the Middles (a chocolate cookie dough wrapped around a peanut-butter filling)

My advance doughs were the following:

• Cranberry-cornmeal cookies
• Lime-coconut cookies
• Oatmeal cookies with dried mango, coconut, and macadamia nuts
• Ribbon cookies
• Chocolate-cherry-pistachio swirls
• Dark chocolate crackles

The live doughs:

• ANZAC biscuits
• Snickerdoodles
• Espresso-toffee chocolate-chunk cookies

All the recipes I tried were new for me except for the espresso-toffee-chocolate chunk cookies, which I blogged about earlier this year as the best chocolate chip cookies ever, and the ribbon cookies, which we made for Cookie Day 2006; both are Dede Wilson recipes.



Of these new doughs, I'd rate the oatmeal cookies as my favorite. They're soft and chewy, and can you go wrong with dried mango? The cranberry-cornmeal cookies are also very good; it's an unusual combination for a cookie. These two are from Lauren Chattman's Mom's Big Book of Cookies, which was published in time for Cookie Day 06 but somehow never was used.



The dark-chocolate crackles, an Abby Dodge recipe from Fine Cooking's December 2007 issue, are superb; the dash of orange zest really brings them to life. I keep thinking that there are interesting ways to tweak the recipe with different-flavor chips and/or zests.

The final two cookies I made were also from the Lauren Chattman book. I liked the lime-coconut cookies enough, but felt that they could use a bit more lime zest to really make them jump. The swirled cookies were my only real disaster of the day. The cookie dough is very soft, and in hindsight, I think it would have benefited from chilling prior to being rolled out. The first batch of swirls rolled up OK, with a bit of difficulty, but the second roll was a nightmare.



This just in: comments from Ryan!

Here's my feelings about the cookies I made. Feel free to edit and append to your blog entry if you'd like.

* Chocolate-peanut butter pinwheels

I've made pinwheel cookies a couple of times before using different recipes. The recipes for both doughs came from the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion. I was disappointed with the doughs. They both went from being cold and unmalleable to warm and sticky quickly with no middle ground. This made rolling them out and then together a joyless experience. Further, the texture of the cookie isn't that good. It could be that I slightly underbaked them but they aren't crispy.

* Caramel-pecan orange biscotti

Biscotti ships well but in previous Cookie Days, making it has been a real time hog since it has to be baked twice. So, since I was making it in advance (I prepared it through baking the log), no reason not to make a fancy recipe. This comes from Tish Boyle's The Good Cookie, a cookie book that I adore and cherish. The recipe calls for making caramel and then letting it harden over chopped pecans on a cookie sheet (doing this on a silpat worked out nicely). I like the flavor this brought to the cookie.

* Chocolate sticks (a biscotti-like chocolate cookie)

This is also from the KACC. They have a lighter texture than biscotti. It is both chocolaty and crunchy. I would definitely make these again. They seem ideally suited to dunking in a glass of milk or a cup of coffee.

* Magic in the Middles (a chocolate cookie dough wrapped around a peanut-butter filling)

Another recipe that would demand too much time to make on Cookie Day. The recipe from KACC calls for rolling sweetened PB into balls, rolling the chocolate dough into balls, flattening the chocolate dough balls, and reforming them around the PB balls. I've made this before and it did not disappoint this time around. It's the closest one can come to a Reese's PB cup in cookie form.

* ANZAC biscuits

I've seen these in several cookie books and I've been curious. ANZAC stands for Australia and New Zealand Army Corps and the biscuits were shipped to soldiers in WWII. So, they are fit for shipping out on Cookie Day, too. They're pretty simple with just oats and butter as the main flavors. There's also some coconut, which seems to mainly add a bit of chewiness to the texture. They're interesting cookies and I like them. I might add chocolate chips to them if I make them again. Or dried fruit.

* Snickerdoodles

A classic New England cookie and one that I always enjoy baking. I used the recipe from The Good Cookie. For whatever reason, Tish doesn't call them snickerdoodles but cinnamon crinkle cookies but in the description she says they're snickerdoodles. I don't get it. Whatever she calls them, it's a good recipe that came out pretty well.

P.S. I'll be back later to update links.

Espresso Cinnamon Coffee Cake

I really wanted to try this cake from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours because I loved the idea of the combination of espresso and cinnamon. Although the cake turned out fine, I definitely erred when putting the batter in the pan. The cake is supposed to have a layer of sugary-chocolatey-espresso goodness waving through the center. However, I cluelessly dumped all the batter in the pan, then sprinkled the filling on top of the batter.

On the plus side, I didn't feel obliged to make the suggested icing for this cake.

Applesauce Cake

This cake came to be in a fairly roundabout way. I've been prowling the dented-and-dinged produce rack lately, and have gotten some great deals on bananas (there's a lot of banana-themed blog entries on the way), red peppers (which I used for stuffed peppers), and apples. I figured I'd use the apples (and a few pears) for a couple of batches of homemade applesauce. Since I didn't add any sugar -- I just cooked down the fruit with a little apple cider and a couple of cinnamon sticks -- I had unsweetened applesauce, perfect for a cake.

While browsing through the Holiday Baking special edition of Everyday Food, I saw this recipe for Applesauce Cake. This cake is spicy and moist, but there was a bit of a problem removing the cake from the pan. My gut instinct told me to line the bottom of the tube pan with parchment paper, and I didn't. I went with just the usual shortening-flour pan release. It was not adequate -- hence the coating of cream-cheese frosting on the cake. (In case you were wondering, yes, I had to serve it upside down.)

Pumpkin-Ginger Pound Cake

For Thanksgiving dessert, I didn't want to make a pie or a cheesecake, but I wanted something pumpkin. I settled on Pumpkin & Ginger Pound Cake. This recipe was published originally in Fine Cooking's October/November 2002 issue, and has recently reappeared in the collection How to Cook a Turkey. (This book is really terrific, by the way.)

It's unfathomable why I waited five years to try this cake. This cake has a gorgeous, fine crumb and a wonderful warm ginger flavor. I tweaked the recipe slightly and buzzed the ginger and the sugar in the food processor before I creamed it all with the butter to start the cake. I think that that helped to distribute the ginger flavor more evenly than simply adding in minced ginger. On the other hand, it's an extra step that I bet you wouldn't have to pursue to get a great cake.

Just for indulgent holiday fun, I had the cake with a scoop of this special flavor of Haagen-Dazs ice cream.

A Great Yellow Cake

This one is from Marcy Goldman's new book, A Passion for Baking. The recipe is Classic American Chocolate Layer Cake, and that is maybe a bit of a misnomer: It's a yellow cake, actually, with chocolate frosting. In fact, it's a beauty of a yellow cake, with a tight crumb and a pound-cake-like texture. The creamy chocolate frosting is an ideal counterpoint.

A Good Chocolate Cake

From time to time, I browse through the book archives, and inevitably while turning pages in a book, I’ll see a recipe and think, “Why have I never made that?” The coincidence of a book browse and the bottom of a container of whole milk nearing an expiration date led me to try this chocolate cake from Wayne Harley Brachman’s American Desserts, which was published in 2003.

Initially, I was afraid I’d overbaked the cake. At first testing, the layers were way not done. Five minutes later, they were quite done. I was almost afraid to slice it for fear that I’d discover a dried-out interior. As it turned out, the cake has a pretty dense, compact texture, almost more like a brownie than a cake. And it was plenty moist.

One thought: I wonder if a different liquid (say, cold coffee) might intensify the color and flavor of the cake. The frosting is nice and fudgy.