Thanksgiving Part 1

Happy belated Thanksgiving everyone!  I took a couple days off of blogging to get ready for the Thanksgiving celebration- lots of cleaning and baking.  Everything went very smoothly.  And little Tyler is feeling much better by the way, he went to daycare on Wednesday and had a great day.  Apparently he missed all his friends because they said he played with the other kids all day.

I decided to break up the Thanksgiving posts into two parts since there are so many recipes I want to share.  The meals leading up to Thanksgiving were pretty unremarkable- I only took two pictures.

Tuesday night was pretty crazy.  After teaching my aerobics class, I went home to watch Tyler so Hubby could run some errands, then went to the grocery store when he got home.  It was so late by the time I got home, and neither of us had eaten, so we just put together a sandwich using up the scraps we had in the fridge.  We only had two pieces of bread so we had to split a sandwich.  Ham, roast beef, hot pepper cheese and spinach on wheat.

This was about the best half of a sandwich I've ever had, and that's probably because I was so hungry.  For breakfast I had a lemon Chobani and lunch was just a bowl of soup.  And then 9 hours later I had the half of sandwich.  Not a good idea to go that long without eating, but we were just so busy.

Then Wednesday night was all about the baking.  Supper was some sausage and corn Glory Days pizza from our freezer.  Man that comes in handy when we don't have time to make a decent meal.  And it's so darn good.  We're definitely going to attempt our own sausage and corn pizza in the near future.

So on to the good stuff.  The first thing I made on Wednesday night was actually for today's brunch (even though some family members- DAD- got into them yesterday).... I made some pumpkin scones using some of the starter from my Amish Friendship bread.  I didn't feel like making the same bread, so I found this website.  Holy recipes.  You can make all kinds of different stuff with the starter, and I chose to make some scones because I thought that would be a nice change of pace.  By the way, this website also has the recipe for the starter, so you don't have to rely on a friend to give you the starter.

I pretty much followed the recipe to a T, and they turned out yummy.  Left out the raisins/currants, and I did forget to sprinkle sugar on them before baking, so I threw some on afterwards.  Wasn't quite the same, but they still tasted good.

from Friendship Bread Kitchen

Pumpkin Amish Friendship Bread Scones

Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 12-15 minutes
Servings: 8
Yield: 8 scones

Ingredients

1 cup Amish Friendship Bread Starter
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1-1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup chilled butter
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup canned pumpkin
1/2 cup raisins or currants (optional)
2 tablespoons turbinado sugar for topping (optional)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400° F (200° C).
2. In a mixing bowl combine flour, baking powder, pumpkin pie spice, baking soda and salt.
3. With a pastry blender, cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Make a well in center of dry mixture; set aside.
4. In another bowl combine starter, pumpkin and egg. Add egg mixture all at once to dry mixture. Using a fork, stir just until moistened. Knead in raisins or currants.
5. Turn out dough onto lightly floured surface. Shape into 4” x 12” rectangle. Cut rectangle into quarters (4” x 3”) and cut each piece on the diagonal to form 8 wedges.
6. Place wedges 1 inch apart on ungreased baking sheet. Top with turbinado sugar if desired.
7. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes until golden.
8. Serve warm with berry butter.
9. ENJOY!

Sticking with the pumpkin theme, the next thing on the list was a marbled pumpkin cheesecake.  OMG.  This was my first attempt EVER at making a cheesecake.  Usually I'm not a big fan, because they're either too sweet or too rich, but this one was amazing.  Helps that I love pumpkin stuff.  I pinned a swirly cheesecake on one of my Pinterest boards, but the recipe looked a little cumbersome, so I pulled on off of Allrecipes instead.  And based on the reviews and the fact that over 20,000 people liked the recipe, I was pretty confident that it would be a good one.  I did change some things around based on some of the reviews, and I added more seasoning because I like the spice to come through.

The other thing I did differently was put a pan of water on the lowest rack in the oven to help with the humidity in the oven during the baking. Proud to say there were no cracks.  I forgot to take a picture of it before people started cutting into it... it was so pretty. 

adapted from this recipe at Allrecipes

Marbled Pumpkin Cheesecake

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups crushed gingersnap cookies 1/3 cup butter, melted 2 (8 ounce) packages light cream cheese, softened

3/4 cup white sugar, divided 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 3 eggs 1 cup canned pumpkin 1 T ground cinnamon 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg 1 teaspoon ground ginger 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

DIRECTIONS:

1.	Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). In a medium bowl, mix together the crushed gingersnap cookies and butter. Press into the bottom, and about 1 inch up the sides of a 9 inch springform pan. Bake crust 10 minutes in the preheated oven. Set aside to cool.
2.	In a medium bowl, mix together the cream cheese, 1/2 cup sugar, and vanilla just until smooth. Mix in eggs one at a time, blending well after each. Set aside 1 cup of the mixture. Blend 1/4 cup sugar, pumpkin, cinnamon, and nutmeg into the remaining mixture.
3.	Spread the pumpkin flavored batter into the crust, and drop the plain batter by spoonfuls onto the top. Swirl with a knife to create a marbled effect.
4.	Bake 55 minutes in the preheated oven, or until filling is set. Run a knife around the edge of the pan. Allow to cool before removing pan rim. Chill for at least 4 hours before serving. Well that's all for now, look for Part 2 coming soon with a spinach salad recipe and cranberry sauce!!