Pumpkin--get in everything I eat from October 1st til Thanksgiving!!!

This time of year, pumpkin seems to be everywhere...lattes, pies, soups, breads...you name it, there's a version with pumpkin.  We decided to take our little sugar pumpkin, and turn him into some delicious ice cream sundaes!

You'll want to start by making your pumpkin puree.  Cut your pumpkin in half and clean out all the guts.  I like to save the seeds so I can toast them up for a snack.  So if you want to do that, put the seeds in a bowl, and toss all the stringy guts.

Once the insides are nice and clean, place the halves on a baking sheet, cut side down.  You'll also want to put some water in your pan so it can steam the pumpkin.  Make sure water gets underneath your pumpkin as well.  Pop 'em in a 400 degree oven, and let them roast for about 20 minutes.  When you pull them out, they should be nice and soft.

Once they're cool enough to handle, scrape out the insides into a bowl.  The meat should easily pull away from the skin.  Then we just used the immersion blender to make a silky smooth puree.

For the ice cream base, we used the same recipe for the base that we used in our 100th post.  We made about half of the recipe, and added in a cinnamon stick and a few cloves, and used a vanilla bean, rather than vanilla extract.

While the cream was simmering, and the spices steeping, you'll want to whip up your egg yolks and sugar.

Once the cream mixture came to a simmer, we removed the cinnamon stick and cloves, and tempered it into the egg yolks and sugar mixture.  Then we added about 1 cup of the pumpkin puree.

That's it!  Your base is ready.  You can just follow the directions on your ice cream maker, and you'll have pumpkin ice cream in no time!

Once our ice cream was churned to our liking, we removed it from the ice cream maker, and stored it in the freezer while we made our sundae toppings.

We toasted up some pepitas to top our sundaes, in place of nuts.

And Justin got to work making some caramel.  Start by melting some sugar in a pan.  We used a combination of raw sugar and brown sugar.

Once your sugar has melted, add in some butter.

Then add in some cream.  Be sure you continue to stir it so your caramel doesn't burn.

Once it's thickened, you're ready to go!  You may want to let it cool a little bit before topping your sundae.

Now, just build your sundae.  We had some leftover maple whipped cream, so we put a dollop on top of our ice cream.  Then sprinkled on the toasted pepitas and caramel.

It was the perfect Fall dessert!  Look for more posts that pumpkin up the volume coming soon.

Strawberry Shortcake

When it comes to desserts, I'm much more apt to choose a fruit-based dessert over some decadent chocolate delight.  For one, chocolate, especially rich, dark chocolate, makes me sneeze.  And I just prefer a lighter, less sweet dessert.  So what better way to use our quart of strawberries, than to make a strawberry shortcake?

It was perfect timing because Justin received an email from Food & Wine with their 20 top strawberry recipes, which included a shortcake recipe.  It came together pretty quickly, and in no time, we were chowing down on dessert.

Justin took care of the strawberries, slicing them in half, and macerating them with some sugar, orange zest, and grated ginger.  The orange and ginger were our added twists, and added some brightness to our strawberries.

As for the shortcakes, mix the cake flour, baking powder, and salt together.  Using your fingers (or a pastry blender if you have one), mix in the cold butter.  Once the butter is incorporated, add in your cream, and mix with a knife until the dough clumps together.

At this point, the recipe has you pat the dough into a round cake pan, but we decided to make individual little shortcakes.  Once you form them to your desired size, place them on a baking sheet, brush on a bit of cream, and sprinkle a little sugar on top.  Then just pop 'em in the oven at 425 degrees for 20 minutes, or until they're golden brown on top.

While your shortcakes are cooking, you can make your whipped cream.  In a bowl you'll need your cream, some vanilla, and some sugar.  If you want a good arm workout, you can whip it by hand, but we opted for the hand mixer.  In less than 5 minutes, we had some delicious, homemade whipped cream.

Once the shortcakes have cooled a bit, slice them in half horizontally, spoon on some strawberries and whipped cream, and top with your shortcake cap.  We also added a bit or orange zest to garnish.

It was so easy, and so delicious.  It's the perfect summer dessert!  The hardest part was waiting for the shortcakes to cool!

Holy Cannoli!

We'll keep this one short and sweet.  Short, since I can link to past posts for the dinner portion, and sweet since we made cannolis!

We got another spaghetti squash from the CSA last week, and we have some leftover meatballs from a past dinner, so that's what we threw together tonight.  Here's our spaghetti squash and meatball how-to.  We did have to make some sauce, so we made a puttanesca-esque sauce.  Sweat out some onions and garlic, add baby bellas and anchovies (these were in oil with capers), toss in a can of tomatoes (preferably San Marzanos), and top with some chopped basil and parsley.  Since we had some parmesan rinds hanging out in the fridge, we threw one in to help thicken the sauce, and add a little cheesyness.  Then you can just let it simmer until you're ready to serve.  Super quick.  Super simple. Super tasty!

Now for the cannolis!  We had some leftover ricotta from our gnocchi, so what better way to use it up than by making dessert?  Honestly, I'm not much of a baker.  I don't have the patience to precisely measure each ingredient, and sift things.  Plus, I tend to gravitate towards salty snacks over sweets.  I prefer the creativity of cooking, where I can add a splash of this and a dash of that until it tastes right.  I leave the baking to my mom.

They took a little more time and work than we thought, but we pushed through!  While Justin manned the sauce, I prepped the cannolis.  For the dough, all you need is flour, salt, sugar, an egg, and some dry white wine.  The only white wine I had was some delicious chocolate flavored wine I'd picked up a couple years ago at the Virginia Wine Festival (If you've never gone, you should definitely check it out!).  We thought it'd add a nice subtle chocolate flavor to the shells.

Once the dough was wrapped up and in the fridge to rest, I moved onto the filling.  I let the ricotta drain for a bit, and then added powdered sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg (since I didn't have allspice), grapefruit zest (since we didn't have a lemon) and some whipped cream (you just need soft peaks when you're whipping the cream).  This sat in the fridge to set up while we ate our sketti squash and meatballs.

Once we were through with dinner, it was time to make cannolis!  Not to be confused with this guy.  We floured the counter and rolled out our dough while the oil heated up.  Its best to get the dough really thin.  We used the bottom of a bowl as our stencil, and cut out circles of dough.  Each circle was wrapped around a little wooden dowel that we found and dropped into the hot oil.  It only took a minute or two for them to fry up, but we got into a groove and knocked out the shells. 

Since we had some extra mint in the fridge, we chopped some up and added it to the filling for a little fresh, brightness.  I made my own pastry bag by dumping the filling into a big ziploc bag and cutting off one of the corners.  This will let you easily pipe the filling into the shells.  Once they had cooled down and were easy to handle, each shell was filled with the ricotta mixture.

During one of our last trips to Trader Joe's, we were roaming the aisles and came across a spice grinder that contained sugar, coffe and chocolate.  We looked at each other, wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, knowing we had to get it.  And what better use for it than to top our cannolis?  We ground some into a little dish and dipped each end of the cannoli into the delicious powder.

It really tied in the chocolate wine that was in the shells, and brought out the cinnamon and nutmeg that were mixed into the filling.  Ok...so maybe this post wasn't as short as I thought it would be, but it certainly was sweet!