Cake Slice Bakers - October 2012: Pumpkin Walnut Cake

This is the best pumpkin bread you will ever taste. I’m being completely serious here. I know many people are skeptical when it comes to “the best” anything because who am I to tell you what is the best? I am no one, and I am telling you this really is the best pumpkin bread you will ever taste. I should end the post right here; right now, and just give you the recipe. In fact, I’ve contemplated doing so for a few seconds, but I’ve decided against it.

If you haven’t noticed already, it is the 20^th of October, which means it’s Cake Slice Bakers time! This marvelously tender cake is the last cake I am baking for the group. Like last year, each group member was allowed to pick any cake they wanted to bake and present. I did not have the luxury of choosing this cake only because the book is in Colorado and I am in South Carolina. Knowing I wouldn’t have the book with me, I asked my mom to go through the book and pick a cake that looked like something I would enjoy baking and eating (she has very different cake taste than I do). Last weekend my mom finally came through and gave me the recipe for the best pumpkin bread in the whole world. (Thank you mama!)

Yes, I know I’m still hyping up this cake, but I don’t care. I really don’t think I have tasted pumpkin bread any better than this, something I thought was impossible. Impossible because there is a pumpkin farm just a few miles away from my home in Colorado. This has the best pumpkin pickings, pumpkin pancake mix, pumpkin squares, and of coarse, the bestest pumpkin bread ever! I’m actually quite depressed that I can’t have that bread this year. But now that I have this recipe, I don’t think I’ll be to dissapointed.

I’m still not sure what to call this. I want to call it pumpkin bread, but the title in the book says Pumpkin Walnut Cake. Whatever, I don’t care, all I know is I can’t stop thinking about this cake.

If you are following me on Instagram (rblooney) you noticed I posted a picture of a cute little mini loaf pan, yeah I baked this cake in that cute little pan. I halved the recipe below and got four mini loaves out of it. I gave one loaf to a family friend after having dinner with her, who later that night e-mailed me asking for the recipe because it was the best pumpkin cake she has ever tasted (see I’m not the only one). That left three loaves for my roommates and me. When I came home from dinner, my roommates sheepishly asked if they could have some. I of coarse said yes, and the first words out of my mouth were “Oh my freaking god this is the best pumpkin bread I’ve ever tasted”. My roommates hurriedly agreed.

This ends the year of The Cake Book. Click here to see what the rest decided to bake. Stay tuned next month for the new book we will be baking from. And if you’re contemplating getting this book, I highly recommend it. It has been the best cake book I have ever baked from.

By the way, I’m so sorry this post is so frantic; I’m just really excited about this cake.

Pumpkin Walnut Cake

From The Cake Book by Tish Boyle

Makes one 9-inch square cake (you can also make it into a loaf)

Ingredients

1 ¾ cups (200g) cake flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

¾ tsp. ground ginger

¾ tsp. ground nutmeg

½ tsp. salt

2 large eggs, room temperature

¾ cup (142g) sugar

¾ cup (142g) brown sugar

½ cup canola oil

1 cup pumpkin puree

1/3 cup milk

1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

¾ cup chopped walnuts (I omitted this)

Directions 

Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease a 9-inch square pan with cooking spray; set aside.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and salt into a medium bowl. Whisk to combine and set aside.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs and the sugars together until creamy and pale. Add the oil, pumpkin puree, milk, and vanilla. Beat until smooth. Slowly add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients. Mix until all the flour has been completely incorporated. If using walnuts, stir them in now. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake on the center rack for 25-30 minutes. My mini loaves baked in about 20 minutes, so I would check around the 18-20 minute mark, just to be safe. When a toothpick is inserted in the middle, it should come out clean.

Cut into squares and serve. This cake is so good it doesn’t need anything on top, but if you are one of those people who need a garnishing I recommend a cinnamon glaze (1 cup powdered sugar, ¾ tsp. ground cinnamon, 1-2 tbsp. milk) or some caramel sauce (can be homemade or store bought). 

Cinnamon Roll Rice Krispie Treats

From October to December time seems to fly by so quickly. I looked at the calendar the other day and was shocked to find that half the month had already passed. Where did that first part of October go? I don’t know, but now I feel the pressure to get more things done.

Today, I’m sharing something very fun. I’m sharing cinnamon roll rice krispie treats. I have had the recipe saved on my computer for a while now, and when a pumpkin spice rice krispie recipe fell through the cracks I quickly came back to these as an alternative, and I’m very glad I did.

The rice krispie part is so pretty with the specks of cinnamon scattered throughout the treat. I was actually mesmerized when I added the cinnamon to the melted marshmallow in the pot . The component that really makes these like cinnamon rolls is the cream cheese frosting. It’s not too sweet, but it’s also not too cream cheesey either. I think frosting is slowly starting to make its way into my heart.

And thank you Brenda for hosting this year's 12 Weeks of Christmas Treats. This post marks 4 weeks into the celebration. 

Cinnamon Roll Rice Krispie Treats

Slightly adapted from Cooking Classy

Makes 16 squares

Cinnamon Rice Krispie Treats

Ingredients

2 tbsp. unsalted butter

dash salt

1 tsp. cinnamon

5 oz. mini marshmallows

1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

3 cups rice krispie cereal

Directions

Line a 9-inch square pan with tin foil. Grease the foil with cooking spray; set aside.

Melt butter in a large pot over medium heat. Toss in the salt and cinnamon and stir. Add in the mini marshmallows. Stir constantly until the marshmallows have melted completely. Take off the heat and stir in the vanilla. Add the cold cereal to the hot marshmallow mixture.

Pour the hot cereal and marshmallow mixture into the prepared pan. Spread the mixture evenly across the pan with a greased rubber spatula. Gently press down to compact the treats. Set the pan in the refrigerator to cool as you make the cream cheese frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients

2 tbsp. unsalted butter, soft

2 oz. cream cheese, soft

¼ tsp. pure vanilla extract

1 cup powdered sugar

ground cinnamon (optional)

Directions

Beat the cream cheese and butter until well combined. Stir in the vanilla. Gently beat the powdered sugar in three stages so as not to make the sugar go flying.

Take the pan out of the fridge and cut into squares. Use a butter knife to spread the cream cheese frosting over the rice krispie treat. Sprinkle the tops with cinnamon if desired.

Egg on Toast

Happy Monday! Well at least I hope it’s happy. A lot of people don’t like Mondays. I guess it’s because it’s the day right after the weekend and everyone is going back to work or school and real life starts all over.

I personally don’t mind Mondays; it’s Tuesdays I hate the most. Tuesdays are like the hangover to Mondays and that’s just not fun. Wednesdays get a little better because half the week has gone by, then Thursdays are super spectacular because the weekend is almost here, but not here, so you get t savor the weekend just a little bit more. Then Friday hits and it’s finally the weekend (although Fridays never feel like Fridays for me because I have a very long lab class that day that cuts into my lunch and then I’m left starving as I measure out 2g of Vitamin C, add it to some good old H₂O, watch the thing boil and hope it doesn’t turn too pink when I add just a smidge too much NaOH, but I digress)

So, here’s to all the people who just don’t like Mondays: a recipe so simple that you basically have to forget how the stove top works to mess it up.

My mom used to make this all the time when I was a little girl, this and hotdogs wrapped in pancakes with a side of ketchup (yes, it really was tasty and my sister and I often asked for it). For a while I stopped eating it, then over the summer I started craving it and made it for lunch at least once a week.

This is nothing new, some people know it as Toad in a Hole, but I know it as Egg on Toast. It is just bread with a hole cut out from the middle with scrambled egg inside. See, easy.

Drizzled with some maple syrup (don’t need to be fancy pancake syrup works just as well here) or honey (as I like to eat it now) this is simply the easiest thing to bake for breakfast or lunch, maybe even brunch.

Egg on Toast

Makes 1 serving

Ingredients

2 slices of your favorite bread

1 large egg, beaten

small pat of butter or cooking spray

maple syrup, pancake syrup, honey (optional)

Directions

Heat a skillet over medium – medium-high heat. Melt some butter on the skillet or grease it with cooking spray.

Cut a 2 – 2 ½ inch hole out of each slice of bread. Place one slice of bread (or two if your skillet is big enough) on the hot pan. Wait a minute for the bread to toast slightly. Pour in half of the beaten egg. Wait for a majority of the egg to cook (you’ll see it start to turn pale) and flip on the other side to cook. Repeat with the remaining bread slice and the remainder of the egg.

Drizzle with syrup or honey and serve warm. I also like the toast the little rounds I cut out. That way I get a little bit of toasty goodness and the bread doesn’t go to waste.  

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Guess what? I’ve got another cookie recipe for you! Yes I know, another cookie recipe. I think that’s a little over 40 cookie recipes I have shared you y’all. Hey, this blog can’t be called Cookie Jar Treats without cookies right? Exactly.

Let me tell you a little bit about these chocolate chip cookies. This is probably the best recipe I have made for a plain old-fashioned chocolate chip cookie. I know everyone says that about their chocolate chip cookies, but I’m saying these are the best so far. Here’s why:

1. No grease. The past few cookies I’ve made have had a little bit of sheen. The grease on the cookie doesn’t mean it’s a bad cookie it’s is just a little off-putting is all.

2. Abundance of brown sugar. I have trouble detecting brown sugar in chocolate chip cookies, which is my favorite component of chocolate chip cookies. I hate when a recipe calls for half white sugar and half brown sugar or slightly more brown sugar to white sugar. Give me at least 80% brown sugar darn it! (P.S. I have a cold, and for me to say that I can taste the brown sugar while not being able to taste anything is pretty darn impressive)

3. The combination of semi-sweet and milk chocolate. I am not a fan of milk chocolate. If someone told me there was a table piled with dark chocolate and a separate table piled with milk chocolate, my little feet would automatically start meandering towards the dark chocolate table. The person I got the recipe from suggested combing the two types of chips, so I did. Turns out I had more milk chocolate chips than semi-sweet, so that’s what I went with.

4. Perfect distribution of chocolate. I use Ghirardelli chocolate for anything that calls for chocolate or chocolate chips. To me they are simply the best, and quite affordable. For some unknown reason though, Ghirardelli makes their milk chocolate chips about 100% bigger than all their other chips. It’s weird, but I deal with it. So I got this notion instead of just pouring in the full disks of milk chocolate and chips of semi-sweet, I decided to roughly chop the chocolate up. I’m doing this with every cookie from now on because it yields the best cookie to chip ratio.

5. Crisp edges. I like cookies with a crisp outer ring. I am a man-handler when it comes to food. Seriously. I take my granola bars apart and eat small chunks at a time; I tear off little sections of my peanut butter sandwiches and eat it in a circle; I eat the tails of goldfish first and then et one side of the fish and then the other. I know I’m weird… what was I saying? Oh yeah, crisp edges. Crisp edges allow me to putt apart the cookie and let me eat it that way I like to eat the rest of my food. Plus the edges of these cookies actually brown! I’ve never baked a cookie where the edges turned brown before. It was very exciting.

6. Finally, the soft and chewy center. It’s still kind of missing the gooey factor, but I’ll take what I can get. The center really is very tender and squishy and I just love it.

Wow that’s a lot of things to love about a simple chocolate chip cookie, right? Wrong, chocolate chip cookies are very complex when you think about it. Try not to think about it too hard, it might hurt your brain.

So please enjoy these cookies. Especially with a glass of milk (who wouldn’t?). The crispy edges hold the milk ever so nicely.

Oh and I forgot to mention something! This post is apart of the 12 Weeks of Christmas Treats hosted by Meal Planning Magic. So if you have a special little sumtin’ sumtin’ that would be great on a holiday treat table, talk to Brenda to find out how to join the blog hop!

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Adapted from Hip Foodie Mom

Makes 2 ½ dozen cookies

Ingredients

1 1/3 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

½ tsp. salt

½ tsp. baking soda

¾ tsp. baking powder

7 tbsp. unsalted butter, soft

¼ cup sugar

¾ cup dark brown sugar

1 egg, room temperature

1 tsp. vanilla extract

30g semisweet chocolate chips, roughly chopped

60g milk chocolate chips, roughly chopped

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper; set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder; set aside.

In a bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugars together on medium speed until soft, fluffy, and light in color. Beat the egg and vanilla in well. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Turn the speed down to low and slowly add the flour mixture in, making sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl as necessary. Fold in the chopped chocolate.

Using a small cookie scoop (mine is about 1 ½ inches in diameter and I think it’s 1 tbsp. worth) divide the cookie dough onto the parchment lined baking sheet. Space each cookie about 2 inches apart. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until the edges turn slightly golden. Allow the cookies to cool on the tray for a few minutes before removing onto a cooling rack.