From Garden to Table Part 5

The pumpkin baking continues.....This weekend we had a lot of potluck meals and BBQ with friends so of course that meant I was in the kitchen baking (not that I mind one bit!).  I decided to finish up the remaining pumpkin from Josh's birthday pie with a treat of his choice.

He wanted pumpkin bars and after searching the internet I finally found one that was up to his liking.  These weren't the traditional bars as I would think of them but more so a pumpkin pie cut up into squares.  I made an oat and peanut base and then topped them with more peanuts and pistachios.

They ended up being a big hit and I was able to get rid of two plates.  This is always my goal with baking as I know I'll end up eating it if it comes home with me.  We still have one more plate in the fridge but I've tasked Josh to take care of that ;-)  

From Garden to Table Part 4

My pumpkin making adventures continued this weekend with Josh's birthday and the party we threw in his honor.  First I had to make pumpkin pie as it is his favorite and he's not a huge fan of the traditional cake.  Thankfully my mom has a great recipe for it that's been passed down through the generations.  Its just amazing and I think the fresh pumpkin made it even better!  I am still on the search for the perfect crust.  This time mine bubbled up in the middle and left bits of crust in the batter.  Overall it didn't really affect the recipe but would be something I'd like to fix in the future.

Mmmm pumpkin pie

My favorite pumpkin creation thus far has to be the pumpkin snicker-doodle cookies I made.  I'm a huge fan of snicker-doodles anyways and adding the pumpkin just made them all the better.  I think it actually helped them stay softer longer as a snicker-doodle tends to dry up fast.  I made a huge amount of these (about 4 dozen) and managed to get rid of all but 10.  Not bad I think!

Josh insisted that his new beer cozy also be in the picture. Pyramid of pumpkin snicker-doodles!

The crazy thing about all this pumpkin is we still have a ton in the fridge!  I'm pretty sure we are down to about 6 cups which is probably the amount I've used thus far.  I can't even fathom what we would have done with all four pumpkins out of the garden.  We would have been eating pie for months...

From Garden to Table Part 3

The quest to make amazing pumpkin treats continues!  Last Friday I decided to give pumpkin scones a try as Josh was due back home the following day and I thought it would be nice to have a little treat waiting for him.

I've made scones before and just love having them around in the morning to grab as I head out the door.  It had found this receipe online earlier and thought it sounded pretty much amazing.  Overall I can't complain about them.  They were moist and had that amazing pumpkin spice to them.

I do have to complain a little about the icing.  Instead of siting nicely on top it soaked through the scones.  Now some people would say what's the problem with that?  Nothing normally but it sure got messy.  Also I felt that if we hadn't eat them as fast as we did (they were all gone by Sunday), they would have been pretty soggy.

Overall I've been pretty satisfied with these pumpkins.  The true test comes at the end of this week.  Josh's birthday is this weekend and I'm whipping up his favorite pumpkin pie to celebrate!

From Garden to Table Phase 2

This weekend I decided to break into the pumpkin again and see what else I could make.  I was craving soups again so I thought I would give a pumpkin soup a try.  I've never made pumpkin soup before and have rarely eaten them as well so you could say it was kind of a shot in the dark.  I knew pumpkin and ginger go together well but I didn't want to stick to the norm.  Instead I found a great spicy pumpkin soup recipe online.

To increase the heat, I added curry powder, cayenne pepper and crushed red pepper.  In the end it just wasn't spicy enough for me so I continued to add cayenne pepper till it met my standards.  I haven't sat down to a bowl of it yet but am excited to break into it with a great piece of bread.

As Josh is away for a few weeks, I'll save the majority of it for when he comes back!  I'm already still thinking about the next pumpkin treat.  I just saw recipes for scones and snicker doodles....these may have to happen soon!

From Garden to Table

After six long months we finally harvested four extremely large pumpkins from the garden.  I was shocked by the size of them and wasn't really quite sure what we were going to do with them.  I had never baked with real pumpkin.  Normally I'm the girl who will make almost everything from scratch because hey it just tastes better that way, but to be honest, a whole pumpkin was just a bit intimidating.

One of the four that came out of the Garden.  Trust me they were all this huge!

I imagined a lot of cutting and boiling followed by even more straining and then finally pureeing, but after a little research I was surprised to find there's a much simpler way.  I carefully cut the pumpkin in half and set it on a baking pan.  (As we don't have the best stocked kitchen this was a grilling drip pan)  I added about a 1/4 inch of water to the bottom and baked it at 350 degrees for an hour and a half.  The pumpkin comes out literally falling off of the skin.  Its not soaked and is ready to be thrown in a blender!

From the blender it went into plastic baggies carefully labeled with the amount and the expiration date.  2 pumpkins and 16 cups later, I thought we might just have enough to tie us over.  (We ended up giving the other two away).

Now the question was what to make. Pumpkin bars, pumpkin bread, pumpkin soup, pumpkin pie....the choices seem endless.  Josh is a huge fan of pumpkin and I just love how it makes you think of fall.  With fall non-existent here in Kenya, I figured this would help a bit!  

Last night I decided to break into the stockpile and start creating some delicious treats.  First recipe, was this awesome pumpkin bread.  It isn't quite a bread as I had to substitute a cake pan for a bread pan.  This also caused the bread to sink a bit in a few places where the cheesecake topping collected.  All in all, its amazing.  Its super moist and has those great spiced flavors of pumpkin pie but in a different texture.  Josh compared it to a pumpkin cheesecake which works for me because that sounds just absolutely delicious.  Hmmm maybe that should be the next thing I make....

The delicious "bread" I made.  We couldn't wait to try it before taking a piicture.

Another attempt...

So all day I had this itch to start some kind of project, accomplish something big, clean something out, etc.  Well I really didn't have anything that met that criteria so I decided to try another recipe.  This was a cheesy garlic baggette.  It didn't turn out as I expected but I think I have an idea where I went wrong.  First I used all-purpose flour instead of bread flour.  There's nothing I can really do about this as we don't have bread flour in Kenya.  Second, my yeast wasn't really going when I added the dry materials.  I think this is because I used raw honey.  The yeast just weren't able to break down the complex sugars.  Lastly I could have done something with the whole kneading process.  The recipe said it worked best with a Kitchen aid.  Well we don't have a Kitchen aid (yet...) so I had to use my good ole muscles.

Overall its alright, a bit doughy but still very tasty.  I mean you can't really go wrong with butter, garlic and cheese!

Baking adventures

This post is a little old and these brownies are definitely all gone now but they look too good to not share.  I found this recipe online a few months ago and tried making them for a friend's baby shower.  They turned out ok but I wasn't satisfied.  The cookie dough on top of the brownie was grainy and pulling apart from the brownie.  The brownie itself wasn't as gooey and moist as I would have liked.  Well with another attempt I think I have this one down.  I had to substitute chocolate chips for a cut up chocolate bar but otherwise they were amazing.  And by amazing I mean diabetes in a bar...SO SWEET.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Brownies

Another Baking Adventure...

So Josh and I are headed to the Aberdares next weekend so I thought I would try baking some bagels for breakfast for us.  I've never made bagels before so it was a new experience.  They were relatively easy to make but it was a long process from start to finish.  I made (as usual) one savory bagel and one sweet.  I love the seasame/garlic ones and have yet to try to the blueberry ones.  Overall they taste delicous but the texture is a bit off.  They are a little flat but I guess thats for next time!

Baking Adventures

I caught the baking bug again.  This time I tried a new twist to a favorite brownie recipe of mine in honor of Elise coming back home tomorrow.  Instead of water I added Bailey's Irish Cream Liquor to the batter.  In case that wasn't enough Irish Cream to taste I whipped up some Bailey's flavored frosting to top the delicious bars.  Think I definitely hit the nail on the head with this one!

More Kenyan Baking Adventures....

So the mood struck me again today.....so I broke out the baking supplies and tried to find a few recipes that would work.  Josh really isn't a huge sweets fan so I made him some cheesy-garlic biscuits.  I on the other hand LOVE sweets so I made some cinnamon-chocolate scones.  Of course I had to do a few substitutions but again it turned out pretty good!  Who would have thought you could make Bisquick and heavy cream with Kenyan materials...



Cheesy-Garlic Bisquits

Cinnimon-Chocolate Scones

A taste of home.....in Kenya

I am always trying to find new recipes that will work over here in Kenya.  Usually that means substituting one ingredient for another or some math to convert metric to inches.  Today was no exception as things such as bread flour and parchment paper just don't exist over here.  Luckily this didn't take away much from these delicious treats.

From left to right: plain, cinnamon sugar, and garlic soft pretzels