Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ah yes, this is what I wait for all year, large quantities of my pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. About 3 years ago I came across a recipe for pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and I believe this was the beginning of my pumpkin obsession. Baker beware, these "cookies" are very moist and fluffy and more like a muffin top than a cookie. I think they are best when kept in the fridge. Also, all those times your mom told you to be careful of the lid on a freshly opened can...yea, I should have listened. Bumped that little lid with my finger and you would have thought I hit an artery! Luckily no blood got into the butternut squash soup or the cookies! These cookies are the highlight of my fall and I change the recipe a smidge every time I've made them. Here's this year's version. Enjoy!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

• 1 cup canned pumpkin
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup applesauce (you could also use vegetable oil)
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon milk
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 
  
• 1. Combine pumpkin, sugar, applesauce, vanilla, and egg. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, ground cinnamon, nutmeg, pumpkin pie spice, and salt. Dissolve the baking soda with the milk and stir in. Add flour mixture to pumpkin mixture and mix well.

2. Add chocolate chips.

• 3. Drop by spoonful on greased cookie sheet. The cookies won't spread or change shape as they bake so if you drop a big sloppy blob on the tray, that's what you'll get when you pull it out of the oven! Also, I kind of drop the entire tray of batter on the counter before baking. Bake at 365 degrees for 12 minutes or until lightly brown and firm.

I made a double batch and got exactly 6 dozen.

Mike's Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. "Mmmmmmm"

Original recipe: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Pumpkin-Chocolate-Chip-Cookies-III/Detail.aspx

AEM

Butternut Squash Soup

Our journey through fall continues with butternut squash soup. We were looking for something interesting and different for dinner but I was feeling lazy and didn't want anything complicated so we settled on giving butternut squash soup a try...even though we don't like soup! As usual, this was an interesting experience...one of the squashes was crying or something as I cut it and started sweating squash juice. No matter how many times I washed my hand, it was coated in a layer of squash tears which made it hard to moved my fingers right! I had to take a scrub brush to my hand, twice!


Butternut Squash Soup
1 butternut squash
1 apple
1 yellow onion
2 cups chicken stock
cinnamon, nutmeg, garlic to taste
olive oil
salt & pepper

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Cut sqaush, apples, and onions into about 1-inche cubes. Toss in olive oil and some salt & pepper. Put onto sheet pans (I used 2 pans and covered them with foil and a bit of cooking spray). Cook for about 40 minutes or until soft.

2. Once veggies are tender, puree in food processor with chicken stock. I did 1 tray of veggies and about 1 cup or so of stock at a time. Once done mashing, place in pot to heat it back up, add the remaining chicken stock and salt & pepper to taste.

Mike's Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars. "That was good, I could do that again. I'm not sure what it takes to get to a 5 but that was pretty close."


AEM

Christmas Eve Invite

It's our first Christmas in our new house and I couldn't be more excited! We invited our families to celebrate Christmas Eve with us and I whipped up some little invitations and packed up some of the pumpkin chocolate chip biscotti I made the other day. I also made some almond biscotti and threw some of those in there too. It's not too fancy because each little package has to travel across the country but I wanted to mix Christmas with fall (to prove I wasn't nuts and actually knew what time of year it is!). They should be arriving any second now!

Here is a copy of the invitation:

Almond & Pumpkin Biscotti and Invite, pre-wrapping

Invite and wrapped biscotti

All my little ducks in a row!

AEM

Pumpkin Pasta

Let's continue with my pumpkin obsession (ok, truth be told, I needed to use the rest of the pumpkin from last night's biscotti.) We like to eat pretty healthy so when I make dinner, I try to keep things interesting but also healthy without sacrificing flavor. On the menu for tonight: Pumpkin Pasta...Lesson learned tonight: if you're not paying attention, you may bump the pan and burn your finger! Oops!

Pumpkin Pasta

1lb of chicken
1 cup of onions
1 tablespoon of garlic
1/2 can (about a cup or so) of pumpkin
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon salt
1 can reduced sodium chicken broth
3 tablespoons skim milk
1/2 box penne pasta (we like the Barilla Plus)

1. Cook chicken however you choose. I bought tenderloins, diced them, and cooked them on the stove over medium-high heat. Set off to the side.
2. Saute onions in olive oil until onions become translucent.

3. Add garlic, salt, pumpkin, nutmeg, chicken broth, and milk to onions. Simmer until sauce starts to thicken.

4. Add chicken to sauce and continue to simmer until sauce thickens to your liking.

5. Cook pasta according to directions.

6. Serve pasta with chicken and add a touch of Parmesan cheese if you wish.

Mike's rating: 5 out of 5 stars "Very good. We should have it again. I wouldn't want it every night but it's a good change of pace." Personally, I thought it was missing a layer of flavor, it needed a touch of something, maybe red peppers, not sure yet...

AEM

Pumpkin Biscotti

I am obsessed with pumpkin so when fall rolls around, I get pumpkin crazy. Imagine my delight when my cable/phones/internet crashed and I had to go work at Starbucks on the day Pumpkin Spice Latte’s (although I get the Frappuccino version) came back. It was a glorious work-from-Starbucks day! A few years ago I started making pumpkin chocolate chip cookies (recipe to come later in the pumpkin-season!) and I was hooked. 2011 will mark my 4^th year of delicious pumpkin cookies so I decided to kick it up a notch with pumpkin chocolate chip biscotti. I’ve never made biscotti before but it seemed easy enough so last night, while Mike was out of town, I decided it was the perfect time to give it a try. Here’s how it’s done with a few of the lessons I learned:

Pumpkin Biscotti

3-1/2 cups flour

1-1/2 cups brown sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

1/2 cup solid-pack canned pumpkin

2 eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla

¾ cups mini chocolate chips (I used 1 cup...that was too many! I always forget that those mini chips go a long way!)

1.      Preheat oven to 350-degrees F and grease 2 large baking sheets.

2.      In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and spice.

3.      In a small bowl, whisk together the pumpkin, eggs, and vanilla.

4.      Add the pumpkin mixture to the flour mixture, stirring until well combined. I used my stand mixer. The dough will look crumbly but will ball up nicely.

5.      Knead in the chocolate chips.

6.      Place dough on a lightly floured surface and divide into 3 equal portions. Shape each portion into a slightly flattened log about 3-inches by 12-inches.

7.      Place logs 3-inches apart on prepared baking sheets. They will not rise and spread like cookies.

8.      Bake for 25 minutes. Remove from oven and place baking sheet in a wire rack to cool 15 minutes.

9.      Reduce the oven temperature to 300 degrees.

10.  Transfer each log to a cutting board. Using a serrated knife, cut diagonally into 1/2-inch slices. Lesson I learned the hard way: don’t saw the logs like a loaf of French bread! Your little biscotti pieces will only break if you saw at them. It took me an entire log to figure this out…just put the serrated knife where you want it and press down, saw at the very end if need be.

11.  Place the biscotti on their side on the baking sheets and bake 10 minutes, flip and bake another 10 minutes. Cool on wire rack.

Mike Scale: 3.5 out of 5 stars "Excellent, pumpkin makes me want a coffee or some hot cider!"

AEM

Change of Direction

Hello faithful followers! All 16 of you!

It's been awhile since we've last chatted with each other. Ash, Kady, and I LOVE this blog and love YOU! Our lives have been so busy over the past few months with some great times (weddings, engagements, sun tans, comedy shows, trips) and some of the hardest times in our lives (Love you always Grandpa, Number 1 always!)- but the three of us have stuck together and made it almost 3/4th of the way through 2011!

Now, we've done alot of "soul searching" about this blog. We felt like it was at a stand still. I mean we've got plenty of funny stories to share, but is it really enriching our followers lives? Are we really doing something to help the blogsphere? We got to thinking about our passions and hobbies and we kept coming back to the same thing...FOOD!

But not just food, while we do love to eat it, our idea took on a new direction: fun new recipes, cute ways to present party appetizers, decorating for holidays and parties, fun invitations, party planning and hosting, the latest fashions, do it yourself projects, and the list went on. Our idea went out of control! But so are we and that's the new direction we've decided to take this blog. Don't worry, we'll still be our funny selves and we'll blog about all the mistakes and laughs we've made along the way to helping us all become the Ultimate Hostess whether it's for a night with the hubby/boyfriend, cocktails with friends, or a Holiday party!

We'll also be re-do'ing the look of the blog so be on the look for some exciting changes and make sure to give us your feedback! Who knows? This could be the start of the "Keeping up with KAK" book series and accessory line! Watch out Martha! Here we COME!

Ciao yall!

Kristin

Black Bean Brownies

Yep, you heard me right, BLACK BEAN BROWNIES. I did it. I had to, I felt I had no choice. I saw this article: Naughty Foods Made Nice and being a self-proclaimed baker, I had to try it...once I stopped feeling nauseous. I googled it first, of course, to see if this was a ridiculous joke or a tree-hugging hippie idea trying to pass for something tasty and healthy. Everyone claimed it was great and you couldn't taste the difference and how could "everyone" be wrong?

So...I did it. I went to the store and I bought myself a box of brownie mix and a can of black beans. I rinsed the beans, put them back into the can, filled the can with water, and dumped them into my mini-food processor. Then I pureed. I had to stop myself from gagging as I took the lid off to examine my mashing. I ended up with this purpley bean juice. I shook my head, shrugged my shoulders and told the dog "welp, here goes nothing" and added the bean juice into my brownie mix. It smelled like brownie mix and beans and I was feeling queasy but my pan was greased and it was too late to turn back.

I poured the batter into my pan and stared at the spoon and bowl, the best part of brownies. The only reason I make brownies is so I can lick the spoon when I'm done. But alas, today was not a spoon day. I took one, small cautious lick and much to my surprise it tasted like brownie. Mentally I had ruined the experience because my brain kept repeating "black bean juice" over and over again and the spoon and bowl ended up in the dishwasher instead of my tummy.

Into the oven the brownies go as I take a look at the box to examine the stats of my new brownies. Packed with fiber and protein, I cut the calories and the fat! But was it worth it? 20 minutes later the house began to smell of brownies! 30 minutes later the timer went off and I stuck a knife into the center to see how we were looking (I'm out of toothpicks). I tasted the little bit of brownie on the knife. It tasted like brownie!

A while later it was time for dessert. Mike knew nothing of my nonsense and I decided only to tell him dessert was healthy tonight. He looked at me funny and said "...brownies?!..." I added some blueberries and a dollop of cool whip, still fearful we'd have beany brownies. One bite in and I was amazed. Mike gobbled it down and told me he liked it. I ended up telling him my secret and he was shocked but instead of being disgusted told me "there were really good!"

I'll probably never trust another brownie again but, in all honesty, I think I'd consider doing it again. They REALLY don't taste any different from normal brownies and I'm always very skeptical of "healthy alternatives". Try it if you don't believe me!