It's Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffin time!

Fall is in there air which means all things pumpkin will be coming our way. I just love the smell and taste of this season as we transition into colder weather. The next few blogs will be about pumpkin everything from the oven. Muffins will be up first. I hope you are ready to try one of my favorites Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins.

Muffins are basically quick breads made small. Muffin batter should only be beaten until mixed so it if alright if you see some small lumps in the batter. Over beating muffin batter will produce a tough texture in the finished product. The muffin batter will be thicker and stiffer than if you were making a cake.

All muffins can be made small, medium or large just remember to adjust the cooking time. If you are making small ones they might take a few minutes less to cook than the recommended cooking time while big ones will probably take a few minutes longer.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

1 ¾ C Flour

1 ½ t Baking Powder

½ t Baking Soda

2 ½ t Pumpkin Pie Spice

¾ t Salt

2 Eggs

1 C Canned Pumpkin – not pumpkin pie filling

1 t Vanilla

1 C Sugar

1/2 C Softened Butter

¾ C Mini Chocolate Chips

Preheat oven to 400°. Grease or lightly spray bottom of muffin tins. Cream together softened butter and sugar. Mix in eggs, pumpkin and vanilla until well blended. Add baking powder, baking soda, salt, pumpkin pie spice and stir. Slowly mix in flour a little at a time until blended. Stir in chocolate chips. Fill prepared muffin tins ¾‘s full and bake 15 to 20 minutes. Be sure to test for doneness with a toothpick.

Tips and Tweaks 

You can use cupcake papers if you would rather have a little less mess than greasing the pans.

Regular chocolate chips can be used in place of the mini chips. The mini chips just spread more chocolate through the muffins. Don’t like chocolate chips with your pumpkin, feel free to either omit them all together or substitute chopped nuts.

The original recipe called for cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves which is basically pumpkin pie spice. Anytime you see this combination of spices or something similar you can substitute pumpkin pie spice. I generally make my own. Except for cinnamon I buy the other spices in the bulk section of the grocery store so that I only have to buy what I need. There are lots of recipes for pumpkin pie spice out on the internet so try making your own and save some cash.

Applesauce may be substituted for the pumpkin in this recipe. When using applesauce substitute the chocolate chips for chopped nuts, raisins or dried cranberries.

Adapted from original recipe which can be found at the below link:

http://seattletimes.com/html/foodwine/2003321041_muffins25.html

Baked Pancakes? Homemade Syrup? Can you do that?

The answer to the question is yes and both are simple to make. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day so why not start it off with something easy and yummy. Everyone has their favorites at the breakfast table and my family was no exception. The one thing we could all agree upon is that syrup from the store or restaurant tastes nasty. You see at my house we always had homemade syrup. Grandma Thurston’s syrup is simple and easy to make. In the time it takes to heat up store bought syrup you can make her simple recipe and know what you are eating.

Grandma Thurston’s Syrup

2 C Sugar

1 C Water

Maple Flavoring to taste

Directions: Mix together sugar and water in a pan. Heat on medium heat until sugar is dissolved, do not boil. When sugar is dissolved add maple flavoring to taste.  Store any unused syrup in the refrigerator.

Now if you are going to make syrup you will need something to pour it on. What about baked pancakes? Now you can use any pancake or biscuit mix but I like to make mine from scratch because: (1) they take no longer to make than the boxed kind; (2) why buy and store different mixes when they all contain the same basic ingredients – flour, sugar, baking powder and salt plus who knows what preservatives; and (3) I know what is in my pancakes.

Baked Pancakes

1 ¼ C Flour

1 C Milk

1 Egg

1T Sugar

2T Vegetable Oil

2 ½ t Baking Powder

½ t Salt

Toppings - optional (blue berries, raspberries, cooked sausage pieces, chocolate chips, nuts, granola  or whatever your favorites are)

Mix together all ingredients then pour into a greased and floured 9"x 9" pan. Drop any of your favorite toppings on top. Bake at 350° for 20-25 minutes.

Tips and Tweaks 

Grandma Thurston’s syrup is basically a 2 to 1 simple syrup recipe, two parts sugar to one part water. The recipe can easily be double, tripled or halved with the same results. It can also be made in the microwave. The syrup is easy to reheat if you make more than you can use so don’t throw away any leftovers.

Maple flavoring it fairly potent so add a little at a time, stir the syrup then take a sniff and a taste to see if it is to your liking before adding more. I would start with ½ t and add as you see fit.

Sometimes maple flavoring is called mapleine. You will find these products where the spices and vanilla are at your local grocery store.

I generally use powered milk in this recipe (1/3 C powdered milk + 7/8 C water). Powdered milk has a long shelf life plus you can fortify most baked goods by adding an additional ¼ C for every cup of flour in a recipe. With that in mind I usually just pour the powdered milk into the flour mixture and guesstimate the amount.

Don't know if it is done? Insert a toothpick into the middle of the pancake just like you would do if you were baking a cake. If the toothpick comes out clean when removed the pancake is done, if not cook a few minutes longer. Be sure to retest after the additional cooking time.

Any basic pancake recipe will work for this recipe, so if you have a favorite use it.

Bars or dropped so many baking choices!

Did you know that all drop cookies recipes can be made into bar cookies instead? Well they can! You might not save any baking time but you will save the time it takes to unload and load your cookies sheets plus you will not have to stop what you are doing every 8 to 10 minutes. This option is included in the instructions on most drop cookie recipes. Pan cookies generally call for a either a 13"x 9" inch pan or a 15"x 10" inch jelly roll pan. Once the cookie dough is made instead of dropping the dough onto cookie sheets you spread all the cookie dough into the pan and bake.

If the recipe you are using doesn't have this option, improvise. Start with the same oven temperature listed in the recipe and double the cooking time. If you want thicker cookies choose a 13"x 9" pan, for thinner or crispier cookies choose a larger pan. Be sure to read the directions to see if the pan should be greased or ungreased. I would recommend starting with a recipe that you have used before so that you are familiar with the process, the quantity of cookie dough produced and what the finished product looks like. That is what I did with the recipe I am sharing today, Oatmeal Cranberry White Chocolate Bars. It started out as a recipe I found on a Quaker® Oats package many years ago called “Chewy Oatmeal Cookies”. The first thing I did was to substitute some of the ingredients for “my favorites”, then I changed the recipe from drop cookies to pan cookies, doubled the recommended baking time and a new cookie was born.

Oatmeal Cranberry White Chocolate Bars

¾ C Shortening

1 ¼ C Packed brown sugar

1 Egg

1/3 C Milk

1 ½ t Vanilla

3 C Quick or Old Fashioned Oats, uncooked

1 C Flour

½ t Baking soda

½ t salt - optional

¼ t cinnamon - optional

1 C Dried Cranberries or substitute for your favorites

1 C White Chocolate Chips or substitute for your favorites

Pre-heat oven to 375° F

Combine together shortening, brown sugar, egg, milk and vanilla at medium speed until well blended and creamy. Mix in baking soda, salt, cinnamon and flour. Add oats and mix until blended. Mix in Dried cranberries and white chips. Press cookie dough into lightly greased 13"x 9" inch pan.  Bake 23-30 minutes. Cool before removing from pan.

Tips and Tweaks:

Don’t like dried cranberries or white chips, substitute for your favorites. Nuts, peanut butter chips, raisins, etc. If using different added ingredients consider if the cinnamon should be eliminated.

When measuring brown sugar it is necessary to pack the sugar into the measuring cup to achieve the correct amount of brown sugar needed for the recipe. Start by filling the measuring cup with the brown sugar then press the sugar down with either your hand or a spoon. Repeat this process until the measuring cup if full.

I would recommend that you use shortening not butter or margarine in this recipe as they tend to make the cookies greasy.

Remember to always start with the shortest cooking time and check your oven temperature before baking.

If you line the bottom and sides of the pan with parchment and leave a little hanging over the sides you will have handles to remove the cookies from the pan. Just run a knife along the sides of the pan without parchment paper and carefully lift out the cookies and place on a cooling rack. Always make the parchment handles on the long side of the pan. If you use this method you will be able to easily remove the cookies from the pan to cut them into bars. 

The original recipe can be found on the Crisco® website at 
http://www.crisco.com/Recipes/Details.aspx?recipeID=1634

Crisco® is a registered trademark of Proctor & Gamble Company.
Quaker ® Oats is a registered trademark of The Quaker Oats Company which is owned by PepsiCo.

Why are my chocolate chip cookies hard?

Drop cookies are my favorite type of cookie because they are simple to make and require no special equipment. They are called dropped cookies because you basically drop a blob of cookie dough on to a cookie sheet and into the oven they go. One of my favorite dropped cookie recipe is Nestle® Toll House® Chocolate Chip Cookies. Who doesn't love a warm chocolate chip cookie with a glass of milk?

The big problem with baking cookies is that people generally over cook them so they are hard and tasteless. All foods continue cooking after they are removed from the oven and cookies are no exception. 

Here are a few rules to insure that all your cookies are soft and chewy.

Rule 1: Cookies should always be taken out of the oven before you think they look done. If the cookies are evenly brown all over when they are removed from the oven they have been over cooked.

Left picture right out of the oven, right picture 10 minutes later.

Rule 2: Cookies should always be taken immediately off the cookie sheet and placed on a cooling rack. Think about how long it takes for cookie sheets to cool down so that you can touch them. If the cookies are left on the cookie sheet they will continue cooking even longer at a much higher temperature.

Rule 3: Always allow cookie sheets to cool before you place the next round of cookie dough on them. Placing cookie dough on hot cookie sheets starts the cooking process.

If you don’t own at least two matching cookie sheets it is time to buy them. Why two matching? All bake ware cooks differently. If you are already having problems don’t make it worse by using two different types of cookie sheets and having to adjust for each one. You wouldn't wear two different running shoes if you were running a race why would you bake with different bake ware. Spend the extra money I promise it will be worth it!

There is one more piece of equipment that I would like you to get that will go a long way in insuring a great finished product and that is an oven thermometer. I don’t care how new or old your oven is rarely is the temperature inside the oven the same at the temperature you set it at. Hang the thermometer from the highest rack near the middle of the oven and leave it there. Then every time you use your oven take a quick look at the temperature, when the oven finishes heating up, and make adjustments if necessary.

My oven.

Be sure to always read the directions before starting. One of the biggest things to watch for in the directions is whether the cookie sheets need to be greased. Cookie sheets are greased to prevent the cookies from sticking to the cookie sheet so never skip this step unless the directions say otherwise. Always grease the cookie sheets with shortening not butter or margarine. I generally use parchment paper on my cookies sheets to eliminate the need to grease the cookie sheets.  There is no need to use a new sheet every time. I use the same two pieces over and over when making cookies then throw them away when I’m done making the batch.

Original Nestle® Toll House® Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 ¼ C Flour
1t Baking soda

1t Salt
1C Butter – softened
¾ C Sugar
¾ C packed Brown Sugar
1t Vanilla
2 Large eggs
2 C Nestle® Toll House® Semi-Sweet Morsels
1 C Chopped nuts

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

Combine flour, baking soda and salt in a small bowl. Beat butter, sugar, brown sugar and vanilla in a large mixer bowl until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time beating well after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in morsels and nuts. Drop by rounded tablespoons onto ungreased baking sheets.

Bake 9 to 11 minutes or until golden brown.

Recipe tips:

Soften butter does not mean melted.

Vanilla, while nice to have in the cookies, is not necessary.  So if you don’t have any don’t make a special trip to the store.

Nuts are optional in this recipe.
Always start with the shortest baking time recommended in the recipe.

Most recipes I make contain some of my own tweaks and this great recipe is no exception.

Shortening, butter or margarine can be used in this recipe. Remember when the recipe calls for butter or margarine it is the cubed kind not the kind in a tub. You can even use a combination of them, if needed, as long as they add up to 1 cup. If you use shortening the cookies won’t spread as much and will have a stronger brown sugar taste.

Left picture made with butter, right picture made with shortening.

When using shortening I always add at least a tablespoon of water to the dough when mixing as I like the texture better. Sometimes I will even add an extra egg instead of the extra water.

You can play a little with the measurements for the sugar and brown sugar as long as the total amount is 1 ½ cups total. So if you are a little short of one of the sugars just substitute the other.

I make my cookies big because I like “COOKIES” not “cookies”. Generally I get about 3 dozen cookies from the recipe.

I personally prefer shiny cookie sheets without sides. If using darker cookie sheets remember that they hold more heat and your cookies will brown sooner.

This is a great basic cookie dough recipe and the chocolate chips can be substituted for a wide variety of other items. Just use your imagination! Nuts, raisins, peanut butter chips…..

Thank you Nestle® for a great recipe that has stood the test of time. The recipe can be found on the back of every package of Nestle® Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels and at the link below.

http://www.verybestbaking.com/recipes/18476/original-nestl%C3%89-toll-house-chocolate-chip-cookies/detail.aspx

Nestle® and Toll House® are registered trademarks owned by Societe des Products Nestle S.A. Vevey, Switzerland