Maple Glazed Pumpkin Bread and Hot Chocolate

 

Hi guys. I'm posting this amazing maple glazed pumpkin bread now before it's past pumpkin season! I barely made it, but I was determined to make something with pumpkin before Thanksgiving was over. I got the recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction, and made it into a loaf instead of cupcakes. Then, I took the maple-glaze from my buddy Sugarplum's blog, and it was an amazing combo! I really love pumpkin and maple together. I dunno if I mentioned it before, but those Maple-Leaf cookies from Trader Joe's are my weakness.

Here is the recipe!

Maple Glazed Pumpkin Bread 

(adapted from Sally's Baking Addiction and Sugar Plum)

Ingredients:

• 1 and 3/4 cups (220 grams) all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 and 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 cup (100 grams) dark brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup (227 grams) pure pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
• 1/2 cup (120 ml) vegetable oil
• 1/3 cup (80 ml) milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F degrees. Spray one loaf pan with non-stick spray. Set aside.
In a large bowl, toss the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves together until combined. Set aside.
In a medium bowl, whisk the brown sugar and eggs together until combined. Add the pumpkin, oil, milk, and vanilla until combined. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Do NOT overmix the batter.
Pour in loaf pan. Bake for 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool completely before frosting.

Maple Glaze 

• 2 tablespoon unsalted butter, softened
• 3/4 cup confectioners' sugar
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Beat together butter, confectioners' sugar, maple syrup and vanilla, in a medium bowl, until well combined and smooth.  Baste glaze on top of bread.

I entered the Brownie Competition again for Pastry Chicago, and made Salted Carmel Mocha Brownies. They weren't the prettiest, but they tasted good! I even made a trial batch and brought them to work, and everyone there loved them. So I was hoping to win one of the prizes, but nope. There were 35 other brownies entered, and they all looked so cute and delicious! Oh well, I've tried my best.

Joshua Johnson from the French Pastry School did a demo and made these Chocolate Brownies with Sablee and Orange Marmalade, and they were soooo good. Yum. And they are pretty, too!

Oooo man, I finally went to the restaurant that has been on my "list of restaurants to eat at" the longest! And it was amazinggg! I met my friend Emily there for dinner, and we split a sandwich and mac and cheese so we'd have plenty of room for dessert. Then we of course each ordered a medium hot chocolate with homemade marshmallow, and the pumpkin cheesecake so we wouldn't have too much chocolate.

I was amazed at how good the hot chocolate was! Luckily, they let us put the rest in to-go cups and take home what we couldn't finish.

I also had a lovely dinner at Lillie's Q, because Brandon and I have been on a BBQ kick lately. It was so cute in there with the Ball jars for cups, and they had hush puppies for an appetizer! 

I got the sampler of pulled pork, chicken, and tri-tip (like brisket) and then my favorite type of fry, sweet potato fries. These had a really awesome seasoning, and I might even say they were one of my favorite sweet potato fries I've had....

I need to find a White Elephant gift for our gift exchange at work, and these would be so awesome!!

 

Pecan Pie Pringles? Hmm, I thought they'd be really good, but they are strange. They have a real maple-y flavor, which I usually love, but combined with potato it's sort of weird. Nice try Pringles!

I'm ready to eat my mom's Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday for the first time in 4 years! Oh it's been toooooo long since I've gone home for Thanksgiving!

Game of Scones

I competed in the Pastry Chicago Scone Competition yesterday at the French Pastry School. I made Banana Peanut Butter and Chocolate Covered Raisin Scones, which I thought turned out pretty well considering I've never made a scone in my life! Scones are supposed to be biscuit-like, and mine might have been a little too muffin-like. But I still thought they tasted pretty good! Those are mine above (#9). I didn't win :( but hopefully I will at one of them! There's a cookie one in June, so I'll probably do that one also. 

Here are a few of the other competitors. The square ones were made by a Kendall Culinary School student. Show-off! Haha oooh just kidding. 

So I actually feel kind of dumb, because I had given 5 scones to the judges, and as I was putting the other 5 scones out for display, a heard a girl ask if she could switch her scones because the ones she gave the judges looked better. And the lady was like "oh yes you want to give the judges the better looking ones of course". And I was thinking that they are judging the ones on display for the looks, and then just judging the ones you give to them for taste. But the ones on display are just for us to look at I guess. SOO I didn't even give them the prettiest ones! At least now I know. Duhh.

#6 was the 1st place winner. They look pretty neat I guess. I need to be more creative and not so basic with my recipes I guess. She had a bunch of crazy steps involved, and I feel like those are always the ones that win. 

We also got to watch a demo of how to make scones. It was pretty simple actually, and Chef Joel Reno talked a lot about the ingredients and how they are really important to making it a good scone, or anything really. I definitely know that after seeing a few of these demos. 

These are his Blue Cheese Onion Pecan scones, and they were really good. The texture was really similar to mine (fluffy muffin like), and he also said having enough moisture was very important cause scones can be too dry a lot of times. 

Soo that was my Saturday morning! Today is Brandon's birthday, but he has a final tomorrow! So he didn't really want to do anything crazy and needs to study most of the day. I bought him a Game of Thrones card game and we're going to get Popeye's for dinner (his favorite). 

I wish we could be getting some Greek's Pizza for dinner, but it's far far away in Muncie, Indiana. This Wings pizza we got last time we were in town was so tasty. I used to work there, so that's probably why I love it so much. Actually, any food place I have worked at is usually somewhere I want to go to when I'm in town. Must be a nostalgic thing. Applebee's, Tradewinds, Frasca (that's in Chicago, but I still wanna go! I'm actually going tomorrow night for Book Club)

These are the BEST donuts in Anderson, Indiana. Deluxe Donuts. The Manager's Special is the best one, with maple frosting and chopped peanuts. Also the Dutch Crunch donut holes are a cake donut, with crumbly crunchyness on the oustide. I always want to get these when we go to visit family, and they are super cheap which makes them even better! Like 60 cents a donut. Amazing.

This picture looks a little gross, but it's a Johnny Appleseed burger from Rockit. We ordered delivery (I know, lazy) and discovered that the burgers are really good! The meat is always cooked a perfect medium, and it's nice and juicy. The toppings on the burger are brie, chopped apples, and pecan aioli. Plus it comes with sweet potato fries! A very delicious, fattening dinner. 

I got the recipe for these Brown Butter Chocolate Chip cookies out of my Food and Wine magazine (which I don't get anymore, but now I get Rachel Ray's mag and I like it!). They tell you to chill the dough overnight so the flavors blend together. When I took them out of the oven, they had basically just flattened out and spread to a very thin cookie. I thought I messed something up! But I think they are supposed to be really flat and crispy. It was hard to not burn them cause they look underdone in the middles, but really brown on the outsides! So these were a confusing cookie to bake, but they were SOOOO good, oh my gosh. Probably because of the browned butter. I'm not sure how long they would stay fresh though, since they're so thin. They might get too crunchy after 2 nights. 

Oh man, it's so sunny outside! I already went to Target this morning, and it was so not packed, which was awesome cause everything was in stock. I think I should go on a jog outside or something. And it's gonna be 80 on Tuesday!!! Hallelujah!

Favorite Things and Pie Contest

Boy do I love pretzel buns. I really love anything pretzel-like. Flat pretzel crisps, soft pretzels from Auntie Annies, and pretzel buns are my favorites. I started seeing pretzel buns on burgers in lots of Chicago restaurants, and I think it's slowly but surely spreading outside the city and into grocery stores, too. I bought these mini pretzel buns at Whole Foods, and they made our buffalo chicken sandwiches 100 times better! If somewhere offers a pretzel bun, I usually get it. Keep 'em coming!

Not a good picture, but Oatmeal Squares is one of my new favorite cereals. My mom actually started buying it a while ago, and so I have her to thank, because I probably wouldn't have just bought them to try on my own. They are kind of plain, but have a good oat-y taste that I really like.

Larabar is a really good healthy snack bar, made usually of dates and other nuts or dried fruits. Most of the bars are standard, like peanut butter or cherry, but I was SO excited when I saw this Banana Foster one, and it did not disappoint, let me tell you. It was awesome. It probably had a ton of sugar in it, but it still was on the healthy side, so I scarfed it down. 

Hilary's Cookies is a little cookie shop near my house, but I got this cookie at Whole Foods. They are vegan! I really couldn't tell, so that makes it an awesome cookie. It was really soft and crumbly, and I think I tasted some coconut flakes or something like that, which was different. Good stuff. 

This one is NOT one of my favorite things, but I had to show you because it looks amazing doesn't it? It tasted too healthy for me. Ha! It had that protein powder taste that most of these energy bars have. I was hoping it was going to be really good, but nope. Didn't really taste smores-y at all. 

I was in a pie contest! It was put on by Pastry Chicago. This is my pie. I made a nectarine-blueberry crumble pie. I've never really made a pie with fruit, so I was pretty nervous to make this pie and serve it to the judges without tasting it myself. But it ended up tasting just fine, so I'm just proud of myself for doing it! 

My pal Emily won 5th place with her Spumoni pie! (on the left) I'm so proud of her! I'm so glad that she told me about these contests, and I plan on entering as many more as I can. The next one is Haunted Cupcakes, and I was going to enter, but I'm going to be out of town that weekend :( But I will definitely enter the next one! 

They just turned on the radiator heat in my apartment building since it's pretty chilly out tonight, and it is so loud and it's making the air so dry in here!! I hate that we can't control it. We might have to open our windows tonight so we don't suffocate from the heaters!