Pumpkin Old Fashioned Donuts

It's Sunday and I'm back with pumpkin treats! Talk about deja vu, right?

When treats are good though, one can excuse repetitive use of ingredients. Besides, I've got pumpkin on the brain. Halloween is fast approaching and they're popping up everywhere--along with those 'fun sized' candy bars that will be my undoing.

So lets just get right down to how today's post came about. One of the added perks of being a blogger is you get lots of very friendly folks emailing you, offering to send you things to try. I tend pass on about 99% of these just because I'm a busy lady and I've got enough stuff to eat and store in my home without people sending me more and trying to finagle a blog post--and because no one has offered to send me an Audi TT (Audi, what gives?).

I do however like the opportunity to give things away to my readers. So today, thanks to the lovely folks at McCormick, I have a box of goodies for one lucky reader in the U.S. of A packed with goodies like McCormick vanilla extract & food colorings, and a few other little treats from Le Creuset, Mui, Wilton and Palderno World Cuisine to assist with your baking fun. 

For my part, I'm whipping up a Halloween themed post. I had several ideas, all utilizing the standard company of Halloween players. Some very cute, some scary and some complicated. In the end though, I settled on tasty. Tasty and pumpkin-y. 

Besides, my last pumpkin recipe didn't use exactly one can of pumpkin and that made those with the small cans of pumpkin, like commenter Katie, go all sad-emoticon.

That makes me :( too. 

I also had leftover pumpkin, so today we're using it and we're making a batch of festive fall donuts.

: ) @

See what I did there?

Pumpkin Spice Cake with Whipped Cream Cheese Frosting

Hello, Cake.

I have a wonderful pumpkin cake to share today! 


About this time last year I had gone on a pumpkin cake baking spree. It never resulted in a blog post as I was disappointed with nearly every recipe that I tried. Some cakes were good, but not so good that I felt they warranted an endorsement.  I had some rather particular ideas of what a pumpkin cake should be like: moist, tender and with just enough spice to provide those fall warm and fuzzy feelings. 

Unfortunately though, I wasn't feeling so warm and fuzzy after baking and tasting all those cakes.  You see, the more recipes I tried, the worse the cakes seemed to get. Some were heavy with spices, which I thought I would enjoy, but often found they gave the cakes a harsh edge. Other cakes I found a bit soapy, which I attributed to the citrus or too much cardamom or ginger in the base. One particular horror to emerge from my ovens was a cake that managed to taste of baking soda and metal.  In all, it was a disappointing run.

So I gave up and moved onto other baking projects to populate the blog. I figured I would pick up the quest again when my desire to eat pumpkin cake returned. Well, along with the damp fall Seattle weather, that desire has returned and this time I found the cake. When I tasted it, I knew no tweaking on my part would improve upon it.  It was just right.  Delightfully moist and echoing the flavors of a pumpkin pie.

It was the perfect base for my whipped cream cheese frosting.  I guarantee a generous slice will provide those warm and fuzzy feelings. 

Dark Chocolate Granola

A happy mid-week to everyone!

I'm still playing the role of bad blogger this month. I decided to take yet another mini break, this time to the Oregon and Washington coast. Meaning, I've spent just about every weekend on the road these past two months and no where near a kitchen.  I'll justify this behavior by pointing out the brief Pacific Northwest summer and that I really need the vitamin D.

So, I've been out and about hiking rather than baking but that's healthier, right? After all, testing and evaluating all these baked goods has the potential to be hard on the hips. Running around outside--and inside I suppose, after children--lends a healthy balance.

I also balance healthy with the not so healthy in my diet, so let's talk granola. I love the stuff. I eat oats in the form of oatmeal or granola almost every morning as part of my breakfast routine. I really like a little ordinary low fat granola sprinkled on my cup of non-fat yogurt. I like to pretend it is really good for me, even though I--like those of us who eye-ball nutrition lables--know better.

Granola is one of those foods that is generally perceived as being healthy, but in reality, kind of isn't.

Sorry to dash any illusions there, but just seeing granola on this blog should have been a sign.