Tea & A Good Book Brewing- Installment 6, Pumpkin Pie Spice Cookbook
I must admit that my love for the particular season we're in right now always comes a bit begrudgingly at first.
At the offset, I hate to exchange flip-flops for fuzzy socks and watermelon for apples! Then, once the trees are full of color and I have smelled an apple crisp or two, I can no longer resist the lure of Autumn! The colors, the smells, the flavors and the sights are downright beguiling and I am hooked.
Who can resist falling in love with ginger and cinnamon and nutmeg and cloves and pumpkin pie spice all over again once they mirror the colors of the outdoors and cause some of the most fragrant aromas on this side of heaven to waft out of the oven?
A recent jaunt to the library found me perusing the books labeled "new," which are handily placed on a self by the checkout counter, where I found the perfect book to help celebrate the season with some new recipes!
This enticing cookbook, called The Pumpkin Pie Spice Cookbook, by Stephanie Pedersen, boasts "Delicious recipes for sweets, treats and other Autumnal Delights."
Autumnal delights...I like that phrase! With this little book in hand, I thereby set about bringing some of that very thing right into the house and up to my kitchen table.
Sometimes I get the greatest enjoyment out of certain cookbooks just by browsing through them- and I never make a single recipe! This is especially true for the cookbooks that have great photos and delicious looking food, but recipes that turn out to be impractical, time-consuming, expensive or just plain out of my league!
Well, The Pumpkin Pie Spice Cookbook gets points both for enticing photographs and recipes that are what I would call practical, meaning they don't call for a host of unusual ingredients or take a huge amount of time to make.
Any gourmet fantasies I may have are usually quickly squelched by three little pairs of feet running to the kitchen at the slightest clatter of the mixing bowls.
Maybe another era will find me slaving over Rolled Flank Steak with Mint Pesto or Roasted Pork Shoulder with Tuscan Salmoriglio Sauce, but this this is not the time! (And yes, these are real recipes from a real cookbook that I found and toted home from the library the same evening as the little gem I am reviewing! Needless to say, it falls into the category of cookbooks with pretty pictures but impractical recipes!)
I decided to try four of the recipes from The Pumpkin Pie Spice Cookbook, starting Friday and making something new up through Monday. For these four recipes, I only bought some nuts & coconut milk, the rest of the ingredients I had on hand...including the common denominator: Pumpkin Pie Spice! Now that I can handle!!!
Just as Mondays are typically soup night here at our house, so Friday supper is often breakfast foods!
In keeping with that tradition, I made Spicy Waffles, and of the four recipes, this turned out to be my favorite of them all!
Spicy Waffles
Makes About 8 Waffles (depending on your waffle iron!)
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1 pinch salt
2 large eggs
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 cup canned pumpkin puree (or sweet potato puree or thick, unsweetened applesauce)
1 2/3 cups dairy or coconut milk
4 Tbsp. butter or coconut oil, melted and cooled
Optional toppings: Sauteed apples, cranberry sauce, jam, honey, maple syrup, powdered sugar, applesauce, chopped nuts.
1. Mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda, pumpkin pie spice, and salt in a large mixing bowl.
2. In a second bowl, add eggs, sugar, pumpkin, milk and butter: beat well.
3. Gently fold in the flour mixture.
4. Cook according to your waffle iron directions.
5. Top with your choice of ingredients.
The waffles smelled wonderful when they were cooking and tasted even better! We don't have any fancy belgian waffle maker and, in fact, ours only makes two "squares" at a time, but this recipe made pulling the waffle iron out of the depths of the pantry and then standing over it to make multiple batches worthwhile.
We enjoyed our waffles in the most traditional way possible...butter & syrup (and, sad to say, the syrup was not even a high grade of anything! The best I do is buy the kind that supposedly has no high fructose corn syrup!)
Of course all three children wanted to help make the waffles! Elasa likes to test out her new reading skills by helping to read the recipes and both she and Gavin love to dump, mix and stir. Parker just likes to be in on as much action as possible, and on this occasion he took full advantage of his new-found height to dig in the silverware drawer and to play with the individual little cups of creamer sitting in a basket by the coffee pot.
I made the second recipe Saturday evening at the tail end of cleaning up from supper and while Wesley gave the boys their baths. Needless to say, there was a bit more peace in the kitchen on this occasion!!!
The recipe for Spiced Nuts is extremely simple and therefore one would think it should be foolproof as well! Leave it to me to find a loophole of imperfection by browning my nuts past the golden stage until they verged on the burnt stage! Oh, dear! And I was even carefully monitoring them! Maybe the fact that I was making a double batch contributed to the over browning?
I used walnuts when I made the recipe- one of the cheaper options in the nut department- but others would be quite good and equally addictive, I am sure!
Spiced Nuts
Makes 1 cup
2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1 Tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
Dash salt
1 cup pecans or walnuts, or a combination of the two
1. In a small saucepan melt butter over moderate heat.
2. Add the sugar, pumpkin pie spice and salt, and stir until sugar's dissolved. Add the nuts, stirring until golden, 2-4 minutes.
3. Transfer the nuts to a bowl to cool.
I made the third recipe on Sunday evening during some unexpected time at home. Our church had services and it was our intention to be there, but Elasa developed a fever & sore throat that morning- after we had taken her to church not realizing anything was amiss- so it seemed a good evening to stay home and enjoy some family time.
Wesley built the first fire of the season in our fireplace, and we played "Go Ape" together. This game is a variation of "Go Fish," but in order to ask someone for a card, you must mimic the action of the monkey on the card you are trying to get. If the player you are asking does not have the card, they tell you to "Go Ape," or draw a card from the pile! It is one of the only times when it is acceptable to stick out your tongue or make funny faces to get what you want! Needless to say, this is one of the children's favorite games!
After playing our game, I made a double recipe of Pumpkin Spice Coffee Drink (with decaf coffee, of course) and we enjoyed it with some cinnamon rolls (I used this recipe) from the freezer that I made several weeks ago. The children weren't too keen on the drink (maybe because I diluted theirs quite a bit with extra milk?), but Wesley & I both decided we liked it...save for the dregs that collected on the bottom!!!
The coffee drink has a nice, but not overpowering, spicy flavor. I used honey for the sweetener and then ended up adding some sugar as it still needed something to bolster it up a bit!
The cinnamon buns, on the other hand, needed no bolstering up! Going from the freezer to the microwave to the plate didn't hurt them in the least and they tasted quite fresh! We won't discuss the calorie count or how much butter this recipe takes, only the fact that these cinnamon buns are one of the best comfort foods out there...and that they are absolutely divine!
Pumpkin Spice Coffee Drink
Makes 2 servings
1/2 cup milk (or use coconut milk or another non-dairy milk)
1 Tbsp. unsweetened pumpkin puree
1 tsp. granulated raw sugar, honey, or agave syrup
1/4-1/2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups hot brewed, strong coffee
Optional: 1 tsp. granulated raw sugar, honey, or agave syrup, or more to taste.
1. In a small pot, whisk together milk, pumpkin, sugar, spice, and vanilla.
2. Heat mixture over medium heat for about two minutes or until the mixture is hot and slightly frothy.
3. Pour the milk mixture into two tall mugs or large cups. Stir in hot coffee and optional sweetener. Stir.
The final recipe was soup in keeping with our Monday-night-is-soup-night tradition!
For the Spicy Pumpkin-Coconut Bisque, I cooked a long neck pumpkin to use fresh in the recipe. The other three recipes were made using pumpkin puree that I canned last fall. It was rather satisfying to chop and bake a whole pumpkin and it made me feel very industrious...not to mention relieved that I have one less pumpkin sitting in the wheelbarrow in our garage! It took three knives to get the thing cut into pieces and then I put them on a baking tray with a bit of water and baked them in the oven for close to an hour-and-a-half, starting at about 360 degrees and cranking it up to 375 degrees when I realized I was running out of time and that I wanted them to cook faster.
While they baked, I mixed up a batch of Divine Breadsticks (another recipe from my favorite cooking blog!) and they were a real hit! I figured that if I was going to make my family the guinea pigs on a rather unusual soup, then I should also try to have a side that would help remedy the oddity! Being a family of "bread-ivores" this was a distinctly good choice!
Elasa was hovering in the kitchen throughout the proceedings and I gave her the extra breadstick dough that didn't fit on my tray. She played around with it and then made her own breadsticks and put them on a round pizza pan for baking. Of course, she wanted me to take a picture of them, too! She said the part in the middle was The Very Hungry Caterpillar in his big cocoon and that the pieces around the edges are other caterpillars waiting for him to hatch (see picture below to properly identify!)
Once the pumpkin had baked long enough to be tender, I pureed it in my food processor (for lack of a blender!) and added it to the soup. It was fun to add the different fragrant spices to the soup, although if I had it to do over, I would go lighter on the ginger. I like ginger, but in this case it kind of took over.
After the soup was all mixed, I pureed it again in the food processor and that gave it a nice, smooth consistency. I skipped the part where you are to simmer it for ten minutes after it is pureed because it was already past the time when I like to serve supper and everyone was ready to eat...plus the breadsticks were hot out of the oven and I wanted to eat them as fresh as possible!!!
I served the soup with sunflower seeds to sprinkle on top and that was good with it, but my favorite way to eat it was by dipping my breadstick into the soup!
I am a bit abashed to admit that it wasn't until I was typing up the recipe for this review that I noticed that I had not used as much pumpkin puree as the recipe called for! In fact, I doubled the recipe on everything but the pumpkin (and the chili powder as I didn't want a repeat of a recent occasion when I followed a recipe against better judgement and it proved to be too spicy for our family of tender-tongues!) Now I know why the soup wasn't as thick as expected and why the ginger may have been overpowering! It seems that nearly every time I try something new with the intention of posting, I end up making rather obvious blunders! (Is there a name for this disorder?)
Makes 4 servings
1 Tbsp. butter
1 large onion, chopped
1 or 2 large garlic cloves, minced
2 cups strong chicken or vegetable broth
2 (14 oz.) cans pumpkin puree
1 (14 oz.) can regular coconut milk
2 Tbsp. orange or lemon juice
2 tsp. ground ginger
2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
2 tsp. chili powder
Optional garnish: chopped chives, parsley, cilantro or pumpkin seeds.
1. Melt the butter in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onions and garlic. Stir until softened, about 5 minutes.
2. Add the broth to the onions and garlic. Cook 2 to 3 minutes.
3. Stir the pumpkin puree, coconut milk, orange (or lemon) juice, ginger, pumpkin pie spice, and chili powder into the liquid. Bring the soup to a simmer, and cook until heated through, 5-7 minutes.
4. Working in batches, pour soup into a blender until the blender's pitcher is no more than half full. Puree soup until completely smooth, returning pureed soup to pot. Continue until all soup is blended. Alternately, use a stick blender to puree the soup in the pot (or a food processor, as I did!)
5. Warm the pureed soup over medium heat. Bring to a simmer and cook another 10 minutes.
Of course there are many untried but tasty-looking recipes in the book under 9 categories:
1. Cocktails and Beverages (Pumpkin Spice Coffee Drink)
2. Appetizers (Spiced Nuts)
3. Sweets
4. Breakfast (Spicy Waffles)
5.Soup, Stew, and Chili (Spicy Pumpkin Coconut Bisque)
6. Main dishes
7. Veggie Sides
8. Condiments
9. Pumpkin Pie Spice Blends
One category that interested me but that I didn't have the time to explore yet was the pumpkin pie spice blends. There are 5 different ones: Basic, Scandinavian, Jamaican, Spicy and Mexican, all with a slightly different tweaking of spices to make them unique. I just used a pumpkin pie spice that I bought at a local bulk foods store, but I have a feeling it wasn't quite as flavorful since it didn't have as many spices as the recipes in this book.
One recipe I still want to try is Spicy Apple Cheesecake. Feels that it should be made for a special occasion, though. Want to plan a party and invite me? You put the kettle on and I'll bring dessert!!!
Oh, and I have something extra-special in store for you all at my next book review, so be sure to check in on Tuesday, November 18!!!
At the offset, I hate to exchange flip-flops for fuzzy socks and watermelon for apples! Then, once the trees are full of color and I have smelled an apple crisp or two, I can no longer resist the lure of Autumn! The colors, the smells, the flavors and the sights are downright beguiling and I am hooked.
Who can resist falling in love with ginger and cinnamon and nutmeg and cloves and pumpkin pie spice all over again once they mirror the colors of the outdoors and cause some of the most fragrant aromas on this side of heaven to waft out of the oven?
A recent jaunt to the library found me perusing the books labeled "new," which are handily placed on a self by the checkout counter, where I found the perfect book to help celebrate the season with some new recipes!
This enticing cookbook, called The Pumpkin Pie Spice Cookbook, by Stephanie Pedersen, boasts "Delicious recipes for sweets, treats and other Autumnal Delights."
Autumnal delights...I like that phrase! With this little book in hand, I thereby set about bringing some of that very thing right into the house and up to my kitchen table.
Sometimes I get the greatest enjoyment out of certain cookbooks just by browsing through them- and I never make a single recipe! This is especially true for the cookbooks that have great photos and delicious looking food, but recipes that turn out to be impractical, time-consuming, expensive or just plain out of my league!
Well, The Pumpkin Pie Spice Cookbook gets points both for enticing photographs and recipes that are what I would call practical, meaning they don't call for a host of unusual ingredients or take a huge amount of time to make.
Any gourmet fantasies I may have are usually quickly squelched by three little pairs of feet running to the kitchen at the slightest clatter of the mixing bowls.
Maybe another era will find me slaving over Rolled Flank Steak with Mint Pesto or Roasted Pork Shoulder with Tuscan Salmoriglio Sauce, but this this is not the time! (And yes, these are real recipes from a real cookbook that I found and toted home from the library the same evening as the little gem I am reviewing! Needless to say, it falls into the category of cookbooks with pretty pictures but impractical recipes!)
I decided to try four of the recipes from The Pumpkin Pie Spice Cookbook, starting Friday and making something new up through Monday. For these four recipes, I only bought some nuts & coconut milk, the rest of the ingredients I had on hand...including the common denominator: Pumpkin Pie Spice! Now that I can handle!!!
Just as Mondays are typically soup night here at our house, so Friday supper is often breakfast foods!
In keeping with that tradition, I made Spicy Waffles, and of the four recipes, this turned out to be my favorite of them all!
Spicy Waffles
Makes About 8 Waffles (depending on your waffle iron!)
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1 pinch salt
2 large eggs
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 cup canned pumpkin puree (or sweet potato puree or thick, unsweetened applesauce)
1 2/3 cups dairy or coconut milk
4 Tbsp. butter or coconut oil, melted and cooled
Optional toppings: Sauteed apples, cranberry sauce, jam, honey, maple syrup, powdered sugar, applesauce, chopped nuts.
1. Mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda, pumpkin pie spice, and salt in a large mixing bowl.
2. In a second bowl, add eggs, sugar, pumpkin, milk and butter: beat well.
3. Gently fold in the flour mixture.
4. Cook according to your waffle iron directions.
5. Top with your choice of ingredients.
The waffles smelled wonderful when they were cooking and tasted even better! We don't have any fancy belgian waffle maker and, in fact, ours only makes two "squares" at a time, but this recipe made pulling the waffle iron out of the depths of the pantry and then standing over it to make multiple batches worthwhile.
We enjoyed our waffles in the most traditional way possible...butter & syrup (and, sad to say, the syrup was not even a high grade of anything! The best I do is buy the kind that supposedly has no high fructose corn syrup!)
Of course all three children wanted to help make the waffles! Elasa likes to test out her new reading skills by helping to read the recipes and both she and Gavin love to dump, mix and stir. Parker just likes to be in on as much action as possible, and on this occasion he took full advantage of his new-found height to dig in the silverware drawer and to play with the individual little cups of creamer sitting in a basket by the coffee pot.
I made the second recipe Saturday evening at the tail end of cleaning up from supper and while Wesley gave the boys their baths. Needless to say, there was a bit more peace in the kitchen on this occasion!!!
The recipe for Spiced Nuts is extremely simple and therefore one would think it should be foolproof as well! Leave it to me to find a loophole of imperfection by browning my nuts past the golden stage until they verged on the burnt stage! Oh, dear! And I was even carefully monitoring them! Maybe the fact that I was making a double batch contributed to the over browning?
I used walnuts when I made the recipe- one of the cheaper options in the nut department- but others would be quite good and equally addictive, I am sure!
Spiced Nuts
Makes 1 cup
2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1 Tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
Dash salt
1 cup pecans or walnuts, or a combination of the two
1. In a small saucepan melt butter over moderate heat.
2. Add the sugar, pumpkin pie spice and salt, and stir until sugar's dissolved. Add the nuts, stirring until golden, 2-4 minutes.
3. Transfer the nuts to a bowl to cool.
I made the third recipe on Sunday evening during some unexpected time at home. Our church had services and it was our intention to be there, but Elasa developed a fever & sore throat that morning- after we had taken her to church not realizing anything was amiss- so it seemed a good evening to stay home and enjoy some family time.
Wesley built the first fire of the season in our fireplace, and we played "Go Ape" together. This game is a variation of "Go Fish," but in order to ask someone for a card, you must mimic the action of the monkey on the card you are trying to get. If the player you are asking does not have the card, they tell you to "Go Ape," or draw a card from the pile! It is one of the only times when it is acceptable to stick out your tongue or make funny faces to get what you want! Needless to say, this is one of the children's favorite games!
The coffee drink has a nice, but not overpowering, spicy flavor. I used honey for the sweetener and then ended up adding some sugar as it still needed something to bolster it up a bit!
The cinnamon buns, on the other hand, needed no bolstering up! Going from the freezer to the microwave to the plate didn't hurt them in the least and they tasted quite fresh! We won't discuss the calorie count or how much butter this recipe takes, only the fact that these cinnamon buns are one of the best comfort foods out there...and that they are absolutely divine!
Pumpkin Spice Coffee Drink
Makes 2 servings
1/2 cup milk (or use coconut milk or another non-dairy milk)
1 Tbsp. unsweetened pumpkin puree
1 tsp. granulated raw sugar, honey, or agave syrup
1/4-1/2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups hot brewed, strong coffee
Optional: 1 tsp. granulated raw sugar, honey, or agave syrup, or more to taste.
1. In a small pot, whisk together milk, pumpkin, sugar, spice, and vanilla.
2. Heat mixture over medium heat for about two minutes or until the mixture is hot and slightly frothy.
3. Pour the milk mixture into two tall mugs or large cups. Stir in hot coffee and optional sweetener. Stir.
The final recipe was soup in keeping with our Monday-night-is-soup-night tradition!
For the Spicy Pumpkin-Coconut Bisque, I cooked a long neck pumpkin to use fresh in the recipe. The other three recipes were made using pumpkin puree that I canned last fall. It was rather satisfying to chop and bake a whole pumpkin and it made me feel very industrious...not to mention relieved that I have one less pumpkin sitting in the wheelbarrow in our garage! It took three knives to get the thing cut into pieces and then I put them on a baking tray with a bit of water and baked them in the oven for close to an hour-and-a-half, starting at about 360 degrees and cranking it up to 375 degrees when I realized I was running out of time and that I wanted them to cook faster.
While they baked, I mixed up a batch of Divine Breadsticks (another recipe from my favorite cooking blog!) and they were a real hit! I figured that if I was going to make my family the guinea pigs on a rather unusual soup, then I should also try to have a side that would help remedy the oddity! Being a family of "bread-ivores" this was a distinctly good choice!
Elasa was hovering in the kitchen throughout the proceedings and I gave her the extra breadstick dough that didn't fit on my tray. She played around with it and then made her own breadsticks and put them on a round pizza pan for baking. Of course, she wanted me to take a picture of them, too! She said the part in the middle was The Very Hungry Caterpillar in his big cocoon and that the pieces around the edges are other caterpillars waiting for him to hatch (see picture below to properly identify!)
Once the pumpkin had baked long enough to be tender, I pureed it in my food processor (for lack of a blender!) and added it to the soup. It was fun to add the different fragrant spices to the soup, although if I had it to do over, I would go lighter on the ginger. I like ginger, but in this case it kind of took over.
After the soup was all mixed, I pureed it again in the food processor and that gave it a nice, smooth consistency. I skipped the part where you are to simmer it for ten minutes after it is pureed because it was already past the time when I like to serve supper and everyone was ready to eat...plus the breadsticks were hot out of the oven and I wanted to eat them as fresh as possible!!!
I served the soup with sunflower seeds to sprinkle on top and that was good with it, but my favorite way to eat it was by dipping my breadstick into the soup!
I am a bit abashed to admit that it wasn't until I was typing up the recipe for this review that I noticed that I had not used as much pumpkin puree as the recipe called for! In fact, I doubled the recipe on everything but the pumpkin (and the chili powder as I didn't want a repeat of a recent occasion when I followed a recipe against better judgement and it proved to be too spicy for our family of tender-tongues!) Now I know why the soup wasn't as thick as expected and why the ginger may have been overpowering! It seems that nearly every time I try something new with the intention of posting, I end up making rather obvious blunders! (Is there a name for this disorder?)
Spicy Pumpkin Coconut Bisque
Makes 4 servings
1 Tbsp. butter
1 large onion, chopped
1 or 2 large garlic cloves, minced
2 cups strong chicken or vegetable broth
2 (14 oz.) cans pumpkin puree
1 (14 oz.) can regular coconut milk
2 Tbsp. orange or lemon juice
2 tsp. ground ginger
2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
2 tsp. chili powder
Optional garnish: chopped chives, parsley, cilantro or pumpkin seeds.
1. Melt the butter in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onions and garlic. Stir until softened, about 5 minutes.
2. Add the broth to the onions and garlic. Cook 2 to 3 minutes.
3. Stir the pumpkin puree, coconut milk, orange (or lemon) juice, ginger, pumpkin pie spice, and chili powder into the liquid. Bring the soup to a simmer, and cook until heated through, 5-7 minutes.
4. Working in batches, pour soup into a blender until the blender's pitcher is no more than half full. Puree soup until completely smooth, returning pureed soup to pot. Continue until all soup is blended. Alternately, use a stick blender to puree the soup in the pot (or a food processor, as I did!)
5. Warm the pureed soup over medium heat. Bring to a simmer and cook another 10 minutes.
Of course there are many untried but tasty-looking recipes in the book under 9 categories:
1. Cocktails and Beverages (Pumpkin Spice Coffee Drink)
2. Appetizers (Spiced Nuts)
3. Sweets
4. Breakfast (Spicy Waffles)
5.Soup, Stew, and Chili (Spicy Pumpkin Coconut Bisque)
6. Main dishes
7. Veggie Sides
8. Condiments
9. Pumpkin Pie Spice Blends
One category that interested me but that I didn't have the time to explore yet was the pumpkin pie spice blends. There are 5 different ones: Basic, Scandinavian, Jamaican, Spicy and Mexican, all with a slightly different tweaking of spices to make them unique. I just used a pumpkin pie spice that I bought at a local bulk foods store, but I have a feeling it wasn't quite as flavorful since it didn't have as many spices as the recipes in this book.
One recipe I still want to try is Spicy Apple Cheesecake. Feels that it should be made for a special occasion, though. Want to plan a party and invite me? You put the kettle on and I'll bring dessert!!!
Oh, and I have something extra-special in store for you all at my next book review, so be sure to check in on Tuesday, November 18!!!
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