{recipe} Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins

Weekly Test Recipes - week 43!

I made some Pumpkin Scones last week, and had to use up the rest of the pumpkin. Had this recipe bookmarked and it was perfect - between the two recipes I used exactly one can of pumpkin.

PUMPKIN CREAM CHEESE MUFFINS (Erin'sFoodFiles)

Muffins:
1 1/2 c. whole wheat flour (can use AP, I used wheat)
1 c. all purpose flour
1 c. white sugar
1 c. brown sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt
2 eggs
1 1/3 c. canned pumpkin
1/3 c. olive oil
2 tsp. vanilla extract

Cream Cheese Topping:
1 (8 oz) pkg. cream cheese
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla extract
3 Tbsp. brown sugar

Steusel Topping:
4 1/2 Tbsp. white whole wheat flour (can use AP - I used half and half)
5 tsp. white sugar
3/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
3 tsp. butter
3 tsp. chopped pecans

*You will need all three layers ready at the time you fill the muffin pans*

For muffins:
In a large bowl, sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Make a well in the center of flour mixture and add eggs, pumpkin, olive oil and vanilla. Beat together until smooth.

For cream cheese:
In a medium bowl, beat cream cheese until soft. Add egg, vanilla and brown sugar. Beat until smooth.

For streusel:
In a medium bowl, mix flour, sugar, cinnamon and pecans. Add butter and cut it in with a fork until crumbly.

TO ASSEMBLE:
Preheat oven to 375F*.

Fill greased or lined muffin tins 1/2 to 2/3 full with pumpkin batter.

Place tablespoon of cream cheese mixture on top, being careful not to let topping touch edges of liner.

Sprinkle streusel on top. Bake 375F for 20-25 minutes. Devour.

These are so yummy! I got 19 muffins out of the batter, but had extra cream cheese left over, and had to make more streusel for the last three muffins. They were highly praised at work, and are especially good with a cup of coffee or milk.

Rating: EXCELLENT!

Stained Glass Window Art

I used this tutorial from V and Co. for wax paper and crayon art. It looks so beautiful! I ended up using these gorgeous leaves to decorate my therapy room window at work.

How to:
1. Cut small squares of wax paper. Mine were about 6"x6"
2. With the shiny side of the paper facing up, shave various colors of crayon onto the paper. I used a scissor for this. There may be safer ways to do this, but a scissors worked pretty well.
3. Lay a second piece of wax paper, shiny side down, on top of the crayon shavings.
4. Put your crayon-shavings-and-wax-paper sandwich on top of a paper towel on your ironing board, and place a second paper towel on top of the wax paper.
5. Iron on medium until crayons are melted, moving the iron around to make sure the crayon colors mix really well and cover the wax paper.
6. Once cool, place wax paper over an outline of the shape you want to cut out. I used a leaf shape. Trace with a pencil and cut out.

I mixed these leaves with construction paper leaves and cut a tree out of a paper bag for my window at work.

2010 Pumpkin Carving

The strangest thing happens to the television on Sunday afternoons. For some reason, it only tunes into channels with football on. No matter how hard my Fiance tries, he can only watch football games on Sunday afternoon =P So I decided to spend the afternoon carving pumpkins. Here's what I came up with this year:

*cat template from here*

*frankenstein template from here*

{recipe} Apple Crisp

Weekly Test Recipes - week 39!

Apple Crisp. It screams fall. There is no such thing as Fall in South Texas. Last week there were a couple mornings where it was "only" in the 70s on the way to work. I loved stepping outside in the morning and not immediately sweating. I couldn't help but laugh audibly as my co-workers were wearing sweatshirts and saying it was chilly. I miss fall. I miss leaves that change colors. I miss going out of my way to step on the crunchy leaves. I miss wearing long sleeves. I needed something to make it feel like fall here, and apple crisp was just the ticket.

This was actually brought into work for my co-worker's birthday. September - November has the majority of birthdays at work, so be on the lookout for lots of new sweets on here in the coming weeks.

I don't have a 'go-to' apple crisp recipe. I do have a fantastic Individual Apple Crisps recipe that is perfect for one or two people to get their fix. I'll have to post that some time. But for now, here's the recipe I made a couple weeks ago.

APPLE CRISP (allrecipes)

10 cups apples, peeled, cored and sliced (I used 5 Granny-Smiths and 2 Braeburns)
1 cup white sugar
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/3 cup water
Topping:
1 cup quick-cooking oats
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup butter, melted

*side note - it took FOREVER to peel and slice all those apples by hand. Like, 45 minutes. I definitely need to invest in one of those all-in-one peeler-corer-slicer dohickies*

lotsa apples

Place the sliced apples in a large bowl. Mix the white sugar, 1 tablespoon flour and ground cinnamon together, and sprinkle over apples. Stir a few times to coat apples. Pour water evenly over all. Combine the oats, 1 cup flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda and melted butter together. Crumble evenly over the apple mixture. Bake at 350* for about 45 minutes.

this photo is before baking

This recipe got rave reviews! A couple of my co-workers had never had apple crisp but are now fans! I'm definitely going to keep this recipe, but tweak it a little bit. I like a sweeter topping and thought all the flour in this oen made it a little too dry for my taste. Next time I'm going to make it using half the oats and half the flour, aiming for a topping with brown sugar/butter in the forefront. Make it today to celebrate fall!

 (this is the coffee cup I use at work - it makes me happy to think of home every day!)

Rating: EXCELLENT!!

Fast Fall Craft

I was home alone this weekend and the crafting bug hit.  Hard.  I browsed projects I've bookmarked on my computer, decided which ones I was going to tackle, and made a trip to Hobby Lobby.  I love you Hobby Lobby.  While I was there I found some new fall decorations, took lots of pictures of possible decor for the wedding, and left with much more than I went in for.  Details later this week or next about the project that inspired the HL trip.

While I was perusing the aisles, I walked past the aisle containing felt and immediately thought of the Valentine's decoration I had made.  Inspiration!  I veered right and picked out some fall felt colors for a new crafty idea.

SUPPLIES:
* Felt in fall colors
* Coordinating ribbon
* Scissors
* Leaf pattern (I found mine in Google Images, copied into Word, printed off and traced/cut out of cardboard)
* Glue gun
* Lighter, matches, or candle lighter

supplies

patterns

1. After you trace and cut out your leaf stencil, trace onto felt pieces.  I cut out two leaves in each color, but didn't end up using all of them.  You can cut more or less, depending on how you want it to look.  I suggest using permanent markers to trace, preferably in colors similar to the felt (I used black for the red felt, and orange for the yellow/orange felt).

2. Cut out your leaves.  Preferrably while watching an episode of Bridezillas and gasping at their craziness.

3. I decided to use the lighter to spiffen up the edges of the leaves a little bit.  The candle lighters where you push the button to ignite worked well for this because it kept my fingers from getting too hot like a match would, and it can quickly be extinguished.  Run the lighter quickly along all the edges of your leaves so the edges darken/melt slightly.  Don't hold it too long in one spot, or it will melt and start to shrivel up.  This happened to me a couple times on one leaf and the points of the leaves disappeared, making the leaf very lop-sided.

4.  Hot glue the leaves to one length of ribbon..  I used a spacer (just the width of a measuring tape) to make sure all the leaves were equally spaced apart on the ribbon.  I cut about a 4-in. piece of ribbon, looped it in half, and glued to the top of the first leaf to use as a hanger.

5.  Viola!  Easy, quick, and cute!  Honestly, once I found the leaf pattern and printed it off, this was done in under an hour.

I'm linking to Get Your Craft On! at Today's Creative Blog

New Fall Decor

I took a trip to Hobby Lobby yesterday to get supplies for a project I'll be posting about later.  But it's impossible to visit HL without doing lots of browsing and dreaming. Fall decorations were 50% off, so I took a look around, and found these little cuties:

They look great in my living room with the fall decor I made last year:

It may be a little early for "Give Thanks" decor, since Thanksgiving isn't until November.  But I'm not a fan of Halloween and won't be putting up any Halloween decorations, so this will be up for a couple months.  Hey, it has beautiful fall colors and we should be thankful year-round, not just a couple weeks per year.  Later this week I'll be posting the project that caused the trip to Hobby Lobby in the first place.  I love it!  Now, if only South Texas had fall weather....