Pumpkin Spice Cookies

Hold on, Operation: Wedding Body, I'mma let you finish, but these pumpkin spice cookies are the best cookies of all time, and they demand to be eaten! 

Seriously. I could eat the whole batch all by myself and not think twice about it. These cookies are so full of flavor, and they have a soft, cakey, chewy texture that is just the way I like my cookies. But really it's the pumpkin spice and cinnamon flavor that makes these so perfect for fall! 

I'm currently in my final semester of classes before student teaching, so this semester I'm taking courses that focus on core subjects (social studies, science, math, reading). In my social studies course, we were told to bring 8 items to participate in a barter and trade activity, so I decided to bake something since I look for any excuse to bake. 

If you love pumpkin spice as much as I do, I recommend you try these out!

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, soft

2 cups sugar

1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin purée 

2 tsp baking soda 

2 eggs

4 cups flour 

1 tsp salt 

2 tsp cinnamon 

4 tsp pumpkin spice 

1 tsp clove 

1 bag of white chocolate chips (or however much you want to add) 

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Cream the butter and sugar together until you have a light and fluffy mixture. Add the eggs, one at a time, then add the pumpkin purée. Mix together the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, then slowly add to the butter mixture on low speed. Mix in the chocolate chips using a spoon or spatula. Spoon the mix onto cookie sheets lined with parchment paper, and bake for about 12 minutes. 

This recipe made 60 cookies for me, but you could half it if you don't want to gain 20 pounds in a day. I have a feeling I'm going to be making these way too frequently. 

I also realized that I misspelled pumpkin on my chalkboard AFTER class. It was just way too early for spelling... Oh well!

Enjoy!

Batman Cake

I had the opportunity this past week to make a cake for a woman that I work with whose son was having a Batman birthday party. She wanted a simple sheet cake with yellow and black frosting, none of the blue that seems to be on a lot of Batman things now. Just the classic black and yellow. I was excite about this because I'm a huge fan of superheroes but I've never had the opportunity to make anything superhero related! 

Overall, I was pretty pleased with how it turned out! Hopefully I'll have the chance some time to make something similar but a little bigger. 

Andrea  

Pumpkin Spice Muffins

It may not be cooler outside here in Alabama yet, but it is fall! You know what that means... pumpkin spice is back everywhere! And I am loving it. I simply can't control myself when I walk past Starbucks on campus, I have to go in and get some form of coffee with pumpkin spice flavor. They've always had these delicious pumpkin muffins with cream cheese filling, so a few years ago I started a trial and error process of trying to recreate them. I put together a few different recipes for the muffin part and the filling part, taking some ideas from this and that recipe until I had something that I loved. I honestly cannot remember where I got the original recipes from, but I do know that these (in my opinion) are waaay better than the muffins at Starbucks! My fiancé, Chad, loves these, and so I made them today as a surprise for him when he comes over tomorrow.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups of flour
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tsp ground cloves
• 4 tsp pumpkin pie spice
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 4 eggs
• 2 cups of sugar
• 2 cups of canned pumpkin puree 
• 1 1/4 cups of vegetable oil
• chopped pecans
• 12 ounces of cream cheese, softened (for filling)
• 1/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp sugar (for filling)
• 1 egg (for filling)

Preheat your oven to 350º and spray a muffin tin with non-stick spray. I usually use a regular muffin tin, but this time I used the large 6-count tin so they would come out a little bigger. While your oven is preheating, whisk all of the dry ingredients together in a mixing bowl. Then use a mixer to add the pumpkin, eggs, and oil. Fill the muffin tins about 3/4 full, then sprinkle the chopped pecans on top of the batter.

Beat together the softened cream cheese, additional sugar, and one egg until thoroughly blended together and smooth. Using an icing bag with a round tip for filling cupcakes, insert the mixture into the middle of the muffins. I usually insert the icing tip about halfway through, then squeeze a liberal amount into the center. I actually will typically double the cream cheese filling so that I can fill them up a lot. It's my favorite part!

Stick them in the oven and bake them 20-25 minutes. When they are done, take them out and let them cool for about 10-15 minutes before transferring them to a wire cooling rack.

I only made a half batch this time, but since Chad loves them so much, I know I will be making them again very, very soon.

Happy fall!
Andrea

Couple's Shower

This past Sunday, I hosted a couple's shower for my friend Nikki and her fiancé Chase. I'm the maid of honor in their wedding on October 19th, so I wanted to have a shower for both of them to be excited about. So, there was barbecue, cornhole, and cake!

I was in love with the sign in table! Instead of each guest signing a boring guest book, I decided to get a little more participation from them. I saw these mini trunks on sale for 50% off at Hobby Lobby, so I thought it would be cute to have each guest write down a date night idea. Chase and Nikki aren't allowed to read any of them until they pull one from the trunk, and if they pull it, they have to do it! Some of them require a little bit of planning, others don't. But it's a way to try new things they might not have thought of before! 

Now for the menu. I admit, I went too far with the sweets, but I think there can never be enough sweet stuff at parties! There was an ombre petal cake, peanut butter buckeyes, s'mores marshmallow pops, chocolate chip cookies, barbecue on Hawaiian rolls, fries in paper cones, fruit skewers, fruit dip, tea, and lemonade. Mom made the barbecue, and it was sooo yummy! 

Here's a close up of the petal cake I made, because I was so excited that it came out fairly close to what I had envisioned. 

My fiancé, Chad, took some better pictures, so hopefully I can snag those from him and get them up soon! 

Andrea

Long Time, No See

I have not been on Blogger in forever. Literally almost 3 years. But a recent requirement to use Blogger to create a blog following Flat Stanley reminded me, "hey, I already have a blog!" Class has taken over my life lately, and probably will again pretty soon, but I still consistently bake and create recipes, so I'm going to try to get back into making semi-regular posts here. 

So, here are some things I've been up to in the past couple of years. 

These are just a few of the things I've done lately, but I'm constantly trying new things, and I have some exciting baking opportunities coming up soon, so hopefully I can get those up soon, as well!