Miniature Pumpkin Pies with Streusel Topping and Vanilla Buttercream

I made these for the bridal shower. They were a hit, the little pockets of creamy pumpkin topped with crunchy brown-sugary goodness. I really liked them, especially since they could be made ahead of time. All I had to do the morning of the shower was pop them in the preheated oven.

Thinking about the holidays: A batch of these, frozen, would make a great gift for someone who likes to entertain. She could stash them in her freezer and have on hand for last-minute guests.

For the miniature pies:

refrigerated pie pastry, homemade or purchased; I don't judge
1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree
1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
2 egg yolks
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 egg whites

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Roll the pastry dough to about 1/4-inch thickness. Using a round cookie cutter, cut 2.5- or 3-inch circles and press into miniature muffin tins. (I can't remember if I greased them or not. Maybe I sprayed them with Pam.)

In a large bowl, mix together the pumpkin, sweetened condensed milk, and egg yolks. Stir in the cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and salt. In a large glass or metal bowl, whip egg whites until soft peaks form. Gently fold into pumpkin mixture.

Fill each pastry-lined muffin cup about 1/2 to 2/3 with the pumpkin mixture.

To bake and freeze for later:
Cover with freezer-grade aluminum foil and freeze. To bake, remove from freezer and bake without thawing as directed below.

To bake and enjoy now:
Bake for about 8 minutes, remove from oven, and top with the streusel mixture:

Streusel topping:
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoon butter, chilled
1 cup chopped, roasted pecans

Combine the flour, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Cut in the butter until the mixture is crumbly. Add the roasted pecans and toss the mixture. Top the little pies with a bit of the streusel mixture.

Bake for another 5 to 8 minutes, or until the pastry begins to turn golden. Remove from oven and cool on wire racks.

Vanilla buttercream:
1 stick butter, softened
4 cups or so of confectioner's sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
milk

Cream the butter and add the confectioner's sugar a cup at a time. Add the vanilla and milk, one tablespoon at a time, until it's a good, thick consistency. Pipe or dollop onto cooled pumpkin pies.

This icing was a bit sweet. The next time I make these I'll make a cream cheese frosting. Or leave off the frosting altogether; the miniature pumpkin pies are really good on their own.

Yields about 4-5 dozen miniature pumpkin pies

Black & Orange Cookies

Or brown and orange cookies.

Some people call these cookies monkey poop or cat poo. In our house, we call them "those chocolate things that you cook on the stove with the peanut butter and oatmeal."

Black & Orange Cookies is catchier, don't you think?

To make:

2 cups sugar
4 tablespoons cocoa
1/2 cup milk (I use 1%)
1 stick butter

Combine in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Bring mixture to boil. Continue to boil, stirring, for one minute. Remove from heat and add:

1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup peanut butter (crunchy or smooth)
2 cups oats (See - they have oats. They're totally healthy.)

Combine well and drop by teaspoons onto wax paper or parchment paper or silpat. The mixture will be soft and wet (like monkey poo!) and will set up in a few minutes.

For Halloween, I used orange candy melts.


Craft stores and large discount stores carry them. They are orange-colored, not orange-flavored.

Put about 1/2 cup in a microwave-safe bowl.


Heat in the microwave until melted. You know your microwave best; mine took about a minute at half power, stopping every 20 seconds or so to stir well.

Ladle the melted candy in a zip-top bag and snip the very end of one corner. Drizzle the candy onto cookies and let sit.



If kids will be at the Thanksgiving table, these would make a good dessert as long as they can eat peanut butter. Kids may prefer monkey poo cookies to pumpkin pie. You could drizzle cookies with red, yellow, and orange candy melts for a fall look. Or top with sprinkles while the cookies are still wet. Go crazy with it.

Halloween Cupcakes

I love this time of year.

I made cupcakes for my son to take to school to share. Really, I wanted to experiment with chocolate spider webs as garnish for a cake. If I was going to do that, I'd need to get them out of the house fast. So. Good snack for the 3rd grade.

To make:

Bake your favorite cupcakes a day or two ahead.

Cover a couple of baking sheets with wax paper or parchment paper. Or silpats. Just cover them, to help make cleanup easy later.

In the meantime, melt some chocolate or almond bark, which is what I used. It's cheap and melts easily. I used three squares that I cut off the block 'o almond bark.

Spoon the melted chocolate into a zip-top bag. Snip the very end off of one corner. We're crafting a pastry-bag-type implement.

Make circles with the melted chocolate.



Draw "spokes" out from the center to the edge of the farthest circle.



But Keetha! They look like wagon wheels! Not spider webs!

I found that four circles looks more spider web-ish than three. I was going for the affect rather a literal interpretation of a spider web.

Let the chocolate harden up, which takes just a few minutes. When the cupcakes are frosted, peel up the chocolate spider webs.



For the buttercream:

Cream together two sticks of unsalted butter. Add 5 to 6 cups of powdered sugar and a couple of teaspoons of vanilla. Add milk, a tablespoon at a time, until it's the consistency you want. Then tint with food coloring or food paste color.

My cupcakes have orange frosting - really - only it looks yellow in the photos.



Happy Fall!

Cider-Roasted Pork Loin

I loves me some magazines - Real Simple, Oprah, Mary Engelbreit Home Companion, Southern Living, Cooking Light - and I've got lots of them. I hate throwing them out and to soften the blow, I go through stacks of them, tearing out relavant pieces - recipes, articles, random photos for inspiration.

That decreases the number of magazines but also increases the stacks of recipes sandwiched between cookbooks in the pie safe in the kitchen.


A few weeks ago, I went through that stack of recipes torn from magazines. It was probably three inches thick. I culled and sorted, throwing away many recipes that either didn't sound good anymore or that I knew I would never make. (I have an idealistic version of Kitchen Keetha and she spends hours each weeknight in the kitchen crafting delicious and nutritious meals. She grocery shops and has a spreadsheet listing all the ingredients in her kitchen, never runs out of anything, and always has fresh herbs and rarely used condiments on hand. She was the one who saved those ambitious recipes.)

Out of that stack, I set aside a handful of recipes that I would try this fall. One of those was Cider-Roasted Pork Loin. Doesn't that sound so autumney?

After brining overnight, the tenderloin had to roast for something like an hour, which is really too long for weeknight cooking but anyway. As the tenderloin cooked it smelled divine but I was having doubts. WHAT IF this was only so so and we were all starving and I'd been thinking for ages how good it sounded, etc.

But this recipe was great. The tenderloin was juicy and flavorful. The apple cider gave it a hint of sweetness but not maple syrup sweet. It was really good. We're already planning to serve it at a holiday gathering, where we'll have it with yeast rolls and sweet potato butter.

3 cups water
3 cups apple cider
1/4 cup kosher salt
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
1 tablespoons coriander seeds (Note - we left these out because I didn't have any on hand.)
1 bay leaf
1 (2-pound) boneless pork loin (we used one tenderloin and halved all the ingredients)
2 cups apple cider
Cooking spray
1 1/2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary
1 1/2 teaspoons chopped fresh sage (I used dried sage. If there's one thing I'm certain of, it's that our local grocer does not have any fresh sage. It doesn't have any fresh parsley.)
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Combine the first 6 ingredients in a saucepan; bring to a boil, stirring until salt dissolves. Remove from heat; cool. Pour brine into a 2-gallon zip-top plastic bag. Add pork; seal. Refrigerate 8 hours or overnight, turning bag occasionally.

Preheat oven to 350°.

Bring 2 cups cider to a boil in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Cook until cider has thickened and reduced to 1/4 cup (about 15 minutes). Set aside.

Remove pork from bag; discard brine. Place pork on rack of a broiler pan coated with cooking spray. Lightly coat pork with cooking spray. Combine rosemary, sage, and black pepper; sprinkle evenly over pork. Bake at 350° for 1 hour or until thermometer registers 155°, basting twice with cider reduction during final 20 minutes of cooking. Remove from oven; baste with remaining cider reduction. Let stand 10 minutes before slicing.

Rice Dressing

Jeffrey introduced me to this dish and it's been a standard in our kitchen ever since. It came from a cookbook from his hometown of Hollandale, Mississipi. Rice Dressing can be a side dish, not unlike traditional cornbread dressing (only it’s, you know, rice) or a meal-in-one.

1 cup rice, uncooked
1 can Cream of whatever soup (you can use cream of mushroom, cream of celery, cream of whatever your heart desires)
about half that empty soup can of water
1 can French onion soup
1 pound ground turkey (or beef), uncooked
1 onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
(Or you can use one package of frozen chopped onion and bell pepper.)
About 3 ribs stalks of celery, chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine all ingredients in a 9x13-inch casserole dish. Stir well and cover tightly with aluminum foil.

Bake for about one hour.

Note: Smells crazy good while it’s cooking.

Honey Roasted Pork Tenderloin and Baked Sweet Potatoes

As soon as the temperatures begin to turn the slightest bit cool, I crave fall favorites like this.

Honey Roasted Pork Tenderloin

• 1/3 cup honey
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons sesame oil
• 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 2 (3/4 pound) pork tenderloins

Combine everything but the tenderloin in a small bowl. Pour over the tenderloin, which I usually have in a zip-top bag. I like to marinate it for a few hours or overnight.

(When I'm roasting just one pork tenderloin, I use the same amount of marinade because I like it, and also because me dividing fractions is not pretty.)

When you’re ready to cook the tenderloin, take it from the fridge so it come to room temperature.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Roast for about 15 minutes, then decrease temperature to about 350 degrees and roast 45 minutes longer or so. Until it’s done, which most people is say is when the internal temperature is 160 degrees.


For baked sweet potatoes, wrap sweet potatoes in aluminum foil and bake. I know! It depends on the size of the potatoes as to how long it will take to bake. I’d say, on average, for around 30 to 45 minutes or so.

I like to split it open and dollop the sweet potato with butter and that’s it. You can add brown sugar and nutmeg and make it your own little sweet potato casserole if you like.