Williams-Sonoma Pumpkin Cake Pops

This kit is sold by Williams-Sonoma. It comes with a two-part pan to make mini pumpkins that are put on sticks to make cake pops. We had them on our pumpkin dessert buffet. The cake pops themselves are not too sweet. In order to get the cake pop to stay on the stick (especially after the addition of the glaze) you melt white chocolate and dip the end of the stick it it before sticking it into the cake. To glaze the pops, the directions have you drizzle the glaze on with a wisk, which seemed odd so we used a spoon and then color with sprinkles. They are a little labor intensive, but we thought ours came out cute and tasted good, too.

It took a while to get the correct amount of batter to make perfect little pumpkins

We used teamwork, one drizzling the glaze and one putting on the sprinkles and yet another finding a place to put them while they dried.

Roasted Pumpkin with Herbs and Garlic

This recipe came from an interesting article in the November 2012 issue of Food and Wine. The article is about Thanksgiving dinner at a fabulous sounding farm in Northern California. I want to live there! The only changes I made to the recipe was to cut it down to serve 3 or 4 from the original 10 to 12.

 

Here's what they had to say about it: "With patches of man-size pumpkins and green gourds hanging from trellises at Hudson Ranch and Vineyards, some kind of squash dish is a requirement at Thanksgiving dinner. This simple gratin features cubes of melt-in-your-mouth winter squash flavored with thyme and sage."

 

They are absolutely right about the melt-in-your-mouth part. I've eaten a lot of roasted pumpkin, but this simple recipe is really good.

 

 

Pumpkin Pecan Polvorones

These delicious little takes on Mexican wedding cookies from the website Cookie and Kate didn't last long when I took them to work one morning. And for good reason, they're really good. They are messy though, the powdered sugar leaving trails on the carpet all around the office. I used regular butter and replaced one cup of the whole wheat pastry flour with one cup of regular all-purpose flour. The Hub is a big fan of regular wedding cookies so he was all over these too.

Pumpkin Pie Pecans

This recipe is from the website thekitchn.com. It uses agave for the sweetner and a heavy dose of spices. I took these nuts to Philadelphia to put on Andrew's birthday cake, which called for a sprinkling of toasted pecans. They complemented the pumpkin poke cake perfectly. We munched on the rest as a snack.

Pineapple-Pumpkin Muffins

This recipe was featured in the magazine Eating Well in an ad for Pompeian olive oil. We enjoyed the combination of pineapple and pumpkin in the muffins. They use whole wheat pastry flour, low-fat buttermilk and egg substitute to lower the calories and fat content. It would be easy to undercook them, and I would make sure the pineapple was diced small.

Pumpkin Latkes

This recipe came from the vast collection at the blog Everything Pumpkin. There are plenty of pumpkin latkes recipes out there, some use pumpkin and potatoes and some use canned pumpkin. I liked this one because of its simplicity and use of fresh pumpkin as the main ingredient. As you can see from the fryer, we used way more oil than necessary, but we were using it for another recipe and decided to just go with it rather than pour the extra hot oil out. These turned out really good with the outsides crispy and the insides tender. I use a food processor to grate, which makes short order of grating just about anything, including pumpkin. The seasonings were perfect and all they needed was a little sour cream and a sprinkling of chives.

Seared Scallops with Pumpkin Soup

This recipe for a quick and easy dinner is from the website womenshealthmag.com. Here's a picture of my friend Kasia cooking as we went through pumpkin recipes one right after the other. This was her favorite of the five we made so I'm including her picture with it. While the scallops are searing, you make a soup of pumpkin puree, chicken broth, honey and butter. Then combine the two and top with toasted hazelnuts and chives. So easy and so good.