Square Spice Cookies

Looking back onto the cupcakes I made, I already planned on cookies but decided to reuse the frosting.

I still wanted to make pumpkin without pumpkin so I made pumpkin spice cookies and added the brown sugar frosting.

Not the prettiest things in the world but they're super delish. Perfect fall spices for a perfect fall dessert. :) And I didn't waste any frosting. I was worried about it being too much on the cookie but it was perfect. 

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Baking into Halloween

I always say holidays are a perfect excuse to bake. Not just to bake but bake with themes and decorations. The pumpkin craze continues and I still wanted to make something with pumpkin but without actual pumpkin in it. Long story short, one of the people I'm baking for cannot have actual pumpkin. To the spice cabinet!

All I needed was cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and ginger to give it that fall/pumpkin flavor. You can even by Pumpkin Pie Spice at the grocery store.

For once, I didn't want to go too crazy with the cupcakes so I made a simple yellow cake and a simple-ish frosting. I used shortening in the frosting to help it hold a little longer too and you can't even tell the difference. There's vegetable shortening but and vegetable shortening with butter flavor. I suggest the butter so it's not too greasy and actually tastes like what it's supposed to.

One reason I didn't want to go too crazy is because I had fun Halloween stuff to add. 

Found these at HomeGoods. Make sure you don't rip the entire seal off, otherwise you may end up with way too many sprinkles on a cupcake. 

Anyway, I added some of the pumpkin spice mixture to the cake batter but mainly saved it for the frosting. A last-minute thought was also adding some brown sugar with did add a lot without overpowering anything. 

The frosting also had a chance to stand out by using a simple yellow cake recipe. All that's left is to frost, decorate and enjoy!

Wait until you see the cookies I made with the leftover frosting. Happy Halloween!

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It's Zucchini, So It HAS To Be Good For You, Right?

Zucchini bread may or may not be good for you but it sure is good, especially when I get to use my favorite kitchen appliance. Again, the Ninja.

Again, I LOVE it. Those are huge chunks of zucchini and it chops it up as small as possible to mix into the batter perfectly. 

You don't want it too chunky or too soupy to the point where your bread doesn't rise but use your discretion on how fine you want to chop it. It takes about two seconds to get it to that consistency then you just fold it into your batter. 

For the batter, I found a recipe that was super easy to follow, on my phone! I loved the feature it had to check off ingredients as you add them, I just had to show you. 

Now the recipe calls for walnuts, but I actually found it quite tasty to add a can of mixed nuts. Just dump a can in the ninja and chop them as fine as you want and fold that into your batter as well. Or, make it without nuts, whichever you prefer. 

Most zucchini bread recipes may call for an hour baking time, but if you making them this small it won't be that long, maybe 30-40 minutes. However, I'm going to warn you about using a pan like this. I assume they'd come out all cute and in one piece, kind of like this. 

Boy was I wrong. I never use non stick spray in my pan because it's already nonstick. I ruined part of it from excess spray and I have had luck with it so far. However, this bread stuck like glue. It may be safe just to use a porcelain dish and cut them up. They were difficult in the end, but totally worth it. 

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Good morning, pumpkin!

Fall is my favorite time of year. The cool weather, the colors of the leaves changing and of course, pumpkin. Pumpkin is huge now. Everything comes in pumpkin and pumpkin scones from Starbucks were always my favorite. I've never ventured into the scone world but I had been on a baking hiatus and was itching to try something new. It surprisingly wasn't as difficult as I thought. The only difficult part is some of the ingredients you may not have on hand. Which isn't necessarily difficult but annoying. I got over it though. 

Most scone recipes call for molasses which you can easily find next to the pancake syrup at the grocery store. You'll also need pumpkin spice. I actually found a bottle of pumpkin spice in the baking section of the store and it smells wonderful. If you can't find it, an easy mix of cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger will do the trick. You'll still need pumpkin of course, which if you're like me you've stocked up while it's in season. Make sure it's canned pumpkin and not pumpkin pie. You'll also need your basic flour, brown sugar and butter. Make sure your butter is cold! 

Not working with softened butter kind of freaked me out but just chop it up into small pieces and mix it into your flour and sugar mix, you want it to be crumbly but still completely mixed together. Mix in your pumpkin and other liquids separately and you'll form a dough. You'll want to knead it on a floured surface like you would any other bread and then you can take a pizza cutter to cut it into the normal triangle shape or however you'd like. Can't lie, I had some issues making triangles so I just scooped them up like cookies. 

While they're baking you can make the glaze which is super easy. All you need for the initial glaze is to whisk powdered sugar and milk together until it's thick. For the pumpkin, you'll still use powdered sugar but you'll add your canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix), pumpkin spice and milk to drizzle on top. I found it easier to make the white glaze in a wide enough dish so you can just dunk the scones in upside down when they're cool. Then take a spoon and drizzle the top with the pumpkin glaze. (Apologies for the lack of photos, I lost most of them when my phone had a heart attack)

They don't look like Starbucks scones but they definitely taste good! Enjoy for breakfast, after dinner or whenever you feel like a pumpkin treat. 

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Where the Buffalo Roam

Now, I'm not a fan of buffalo, hot sauce, any of that stuff so I didn't try this recipe but it got some pretty good reviews. My boyfriend loves anything buffalo and I wanted to make a savory "cupcake" that he would like and while it's not really a cupcake, it's close enough and he devoured it. Point, me.

I'm still kind of nervous about making a savory cupcake like this with actual cake batter so I decided to go with biscuit dough. Not really a cupcake but I still made 'em square and easy to eat. It was trickier than I thought.

I didn't make the biscuits from scratch, just bought the dough in a tube and thought if I pulled them apart in a bowl, I could make a big ball of dough to form into squares. Not so easy because at that point the biscuits have already decided they want to be round. Needless to say, I made it work.

I then used my favorite kitchen tool ever next to the Kitchen Aid Mixer; The Ninja. I had some chicken tenders that I wanted to add to the dough but I didn't want just giant chunks so I chopped them up and doused them in buffalo sauce to add to the stubborn biscuit dough.

I highly suggest you invest in the Ninja. It comes with a smaller attachment but mine is still in a box somewhere from when I moved so the pitcher works for now, also great for margaritas. I'll show you later how awesome it was to make zucchini bread with.

Anyway, mixing the chicken and buffalo sauce was kinda difficult with the biscuit dough and it ended up a little crumbly. Surprisingly ended up working out giving a nice crunch to it. At least it was okay according to my boyfriend but he wouldn't say anything bad about my baking anyway :).

I crumbled the pieces and squished them to form to the size of my pan and dabbed a little hot sauce on top of each one before I put the into the oven.

Follow the dough instructions, it's usually 350-375 for 10-15 minutes. You be the judge on how soft or hard you want them.

For a "frosting," not really, I got an idea from my boyfriend's aunt to mix sour cream and ranch dressing. Done! Just whisk it together and spoon it on top or have it on the side for dipping. I had the idea to chop up some celery and fold it in or garnish with it but the audience I was working with isn't a fan of celery. You can always crumble blue cheese on top as well.

While it's not a cupcake, it's still pretty cute and ends up working perfectly for Sunday afternoon or Monday night football.

From this part of town, Go Bears and enjoy!

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