Tag Archives: recipe

Bake Pumpkin Cookies for Halloween

pumpkin cookies

Pumpkin cookies with chocolate kisses

When were chocolate kisses invented?  How did we survive without them? Particularly when making cookies like these luscious soft, mildly spicy, pumpkin cookies. Go straight for the chocolate, or take bites around the edges and let each bite melt in your mouth before munching the chocolate–either way this is just about the perfect cookie.

Actually Hershey’s Chocolate Kisses, have been around since 1907. [In 1907, my mother was one year old and my father had not yet been born. So not only have Kisses been around my entire life, but my parents’ as well.] While that article I linked in the previous sentence talks about red green and silver foil for Christmas, we know that not only have the foil colors expanded, but kisses are no longer limited to dark brown milk chocolate. Flavors this time of year include pumpkin spice kisses!

Naturally, the Hershey company encourages you to bake with their chocolate (or other flavors) kisses.  Their website shares some great recipes.

I am still in my pumpkin phase, and wanted to use up some of that pureed pumpkin I made from baked pie pumpkins.  To kick it up a bit, I added a kiss to each cookie. But being a traditionalist, I used milk chocolate kisses.

You can make pumpkin cookies with a glaze, with cream cheese frosting, with maple frosting (Mmmmm, that sounds good!) , with chocolate chips and/or nuts inside the cookies or leave them clean.

While you can find several recipes on line, I particularly like this one because it offers a solution to how in the world can you store cookies with kisses on top?  After all they have a pretty point on top and that is bound to get broken when you stack the cookies with the tip pointing up.

[Spoiler Alert] Brilliant solution:  turn the kisses upside down.

Pumpkin Cookies

Serves 24-30
Prep time 10 minutes
Cook time 12 minutes
Total time 22 minutes
Allergy Egg, Wheat
Meal type Dessert
Misc Child Friendly, Freezable

Ingredients

  • 1 cup butter (softened)
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 2 teaspoons cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1/2 teaspoon ginger
  • 1 egg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 cup pureed pumpkin (canned or freshly baked)
  • 2 cups flour

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper, or lightly grease.
2. Beat butter with electric mixer until smooth.
3. Beat in brown sugar
4. Stir or beat in pumpkin, spices, vanilla, egg
5. Whisk together baking soda and baking powder with flour, and then beat the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture.
6. Drop by tablespoon unto cookie sheets. Bake 10-12 minutes until lightly browned on edges and firm on top.
7. Take from cookie sheet onto cooling rack. Place a chocolate kiss upside down in center of each cookie and let cool.

 

Stuffed Pumpkin: Savory or Sweet

Pie Pumpkins

Pie Pumpkinsl for baking stuffed pumpkin

Our pioneer grandmothers cooked a lot of pumpkins before they could get their proper gardens going.  Do you suppose they ever got bored with plain slices of pumpkin or mashed pumpkin?

I have been experimenting with some of those cute little pie pumpkins, and decided to share with you two stuffed pumpkin recipes, although the directions are pretty vague.  You may have tried out the macaroni baked in a pie pumpkin, but if you did not, you might want to look back there for more info on pie pumpkins and how they differ from the Jack-o-Lantern pumpkins.

Not only did I make stuffed pumpkins, I  also baked a couple of the pie pumpkins and scoop out the meat, which I pureed with my hand blender. I used the puree in cookies (recipe coming soon) and waffles.

Now that you understand the benefits of pie pumpkins–here we go with two other ideas for using the pie pumpkins for stuffed pumpkin dishes.

Savory Stuffed Pumpkins

My savory stuffed pumpkins started with a box of Baby Bella Mushrooms. I only needed seven for one pumpkin.

Mushrooms

Baby bell mushrooms

After buttering the inside of the pumpkins, I chopped the mushrooms and added a little salt, a little thyme and a lot of parsley.

Mushroom mixture for stuffed pumpkin

Mushroom mixture

Next, I cut the tops off the pie pumpkins, the same way I would if making a Jack-o-lantern.  Then I scooped out the seeds and stringiest part of the interior. [Note: this is the only hard part of these recipes.  Some people keep the seeds and roast them.  Personally, I don’t want to keep finding the stringy stuff connected to the seeds. If you have found an easy way to clean the seeds, please let me know!]

After I loosely packed the mushrooms into the pumpkin shell, I poured in about 1/3 cup of half and half. Then it occurred to me that a bit of cheese would be good, so I added what I had on time–a slice of mozzarella. [NOTE: BAD CHOICE.  Next time I will use a more melty cheese like Gouda or maybe goat cheese.] I topped the pumpkin/cheese stuffed pumpkin with the “lid”.

Stuffed pumpkin with lids

Two pumpkins with lids ready to bake

After baking on a foil-lined cookie sheet at 375 degrees for about 45 minutes, it looked like this. (Time will vary. Check by sticking a fork into the meat of the pumpkin. When it goes in easily, the pumpkin is done.)

Baked stuffed pumpkin

Baked mushroom-cheese pumpkin

Sweet Stuffed Pumpkin

Next, I decided to use up a single large apple I had in the refrigerator.  I chopped it and mixed with a little brown sugar, some cinnamon and nutmeg. It went into another pumpkin that I had hollowed out and smeared on the inside with some butter.

 

Stuffed pumpkin ready to bake

Popped the lid on the top and baked the apple-stuffed pumpkin along with the mushroom-stuffed pumpkin.

apple stuffed pumpkin

baked apple stuffed pumpkin

Both of these dishes turned out pretty well, but don’t make my mistakes:

Mistake number one:  I let the pumpkins sit on the shelf too long before I baked them, and they got stringier than they should have been.  Use them when they are fresh as possible.

Mistake number two:  As mentioned above–use a melty cheese on top of the mushrooms.

One more warning–you must have mushroom fans in your family if you serve the savory version of stuffed pumpkin.  This is all about mushrooms!!

I confess this is not a vintage or historic recipe, however, I can imagine grandmothers actually baking apples in pumpkins, since they relied so much on pumpkins in the frontier. Plus I mentioned once before a pumpkin-apple pie recipe so we know that combination would be one that earlier ancestors in aprons would have used.

Oatmeal Pie: Oats, Coconut, Maple Syrup

Oatmeal Pie

Oatmeal Pie piece with whipped cream

I’m an advocate for pie for breakfast at all times, but who could find fault with eating oatmeal with maple syrup in the form of pie?

Frugal and tasty, “Oatmeal Pie” demonstrates the make-do attitude of our ancestors in aprons.  As I frequently do, I turned to the Sonnenberg Mennonite Church Centennial cookbook for some vintage takes on this poor man’s pecan pie. After also consulting some web sites, I was prepared to try a variation on the Mennonite cookbook recipe that most appealed to me.

Mennonite

Sonnenberg Mennonite Church Centennial Cook Book

Please understand right at the outset, that although it is called “oatmeal” pie, the pie does not contain a gooey mixture of cooked oats–oatmeal.  Instead, the base for the pie contains either quick-cooking or old fashioned oatmeal–UNCOOKED. Also, although the name “Amish” is attached, other people probably made the pie also.  The history is elusive.

The original Amish oatmeal pie relies on dark corn syrup (Karo©), as do most pecan pie recipes.  However, I was thinking how delicious maple syrup is on oatmeal, and had decided to make a swap.  An experienced baker friend recommended that I include a couple of spoonfuls of the dark corn syrup to balance out the mysterious chemistry and characteristics of corn syrup.  However, by the time I got her advice, I had baked the pie. The good news is, the pie turned out fine.

Whether its a dessert or breakfast–try this old fashioned pie recipe.  Of course, I recommend my Perfect Pie Crust recipe, but if you are in a hurry, you can use a pre-made crust.

Oatmeal Pie with Maple Syrup

Serves 8-10
Prep time 20 minutes
Cook time 1 hour
Total time 1 hour, 20 minutes
Allergy Egg, Milk, Wheat
Meal type Dessert
Misc Child Friendly, Pre-preparable, Serve Cold
Old fashioned Oatmeal Pie makes a frugal substitute for pecan pie. It forms a chewy nutty crust on top.

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup butter (softened)
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon cloves
  • 1 cup maple syrup
  • 3 eggs
  • 3/4 cups old fashioned oats
  • 3/4 cups coconut (flaked)
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1 pie shell (unbaked)

Directions

1. Line pie plate with pie dough and put in refrigerator while you make the filling. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cream butter and sugars. Add spices and syrup and blend well.
3. Beat in eggs, one at a time. and mix until well blended.
4. Stir in milk.
5. Add oatmeal and coconut and stir in well. [ I thought the filling was too thin, and added two tablespoons of rice flour to thicken. This will depend on the texture of your maple syrup. (Use corn starch or flour if you do not have rice flour.)]
6. Pour filling into pie shell and bake at 350 degrees about one hour.

Note

You can use Karo syrup or molasses in your oatmeal pie instead of maple syrup for a slightly different flavor.

Some recipes for oatmeal pie call for addition of nuts, which to me seems to defeat the purpose of substituting oats for pecans, but do your own thing.

As mentioned in the article, an expert in baking suggested it would be better to include a couple spoonsful of Karo syrup when substituting maple syrup to avoid the sugar crystalizing. However, my version did not have any crystalizing. Again, use your own judgment.