Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Mochi Cookies

With mochiko being a new-found flour friend, I’ve been on the hunt for good mochi cookie recipes.  Not really seeing anything super exciting, yet while also being taunted by  Pumpkin Mochi by justJENN recipes, I came up with a theory.

Pumpkin cookies are often super cakey, and mochi is wonderfully chewy. What if you just replace the regular flour in pumpkin cookies with mochiko?  Answer: Jessica worries and spends lots of quality time with google.

The solution that I was happiest with and ended up using came from Joy of Baking, where it’s suggested to use 7/8 cup rice flour to 1 cup all-purpose flour. Mochiko is actually sweet rice flour (or glutinous rice flour), but I decided to give it a shot anyway.  To make life easier, I went with her recipe for pumpkin cookies. 2 cups all-purpose flour?  1 3/4 cups mochiko!  Maybe too easy?

My uneasiness with flour experimentation and the lack of daylight at 1 a.m. means no process photos.  You can see that they turned out looking like totally legit cookies, though!  They tasted like totally legit delicious cookies, too.

Pumpkin Stout Gingerbread Bundt with Brown Butter Icing

Ahh, fall.  Your days are shorter, the air is cooler, and leaves crunch beneath our feet.

Wait…what’s that other sound?

Bundt pans trembling with fear!  Or is it with glee?

That’s right, we’re hurtling towards National Bundt Day (November 15!), made popular and most earnestly celebrated by Mary the Food Librarian.   Last year was my first time paying tribute to the curvaceous confection, and thus the Zebra Bundt Cake was born.  This year’s offering is much more visually tame, but the flavors certainly make up for that.  

Wordless Wednesday: Jacks

I came home to these and a few more on Saturday.  Roommates get full credit!

For more WW, click here.

Butternut Squash Barley Risotto

In grad school, my main source for recipes was AllRecipes.com.  I wouldn’t find out about food blogs until a few years later, and probably would have laughed if someone told me that years later I’d be writing for fun about baking and cooking.  (I might have stopped laughing if you then told me that I would still be freelancing at this point.)

One thing that drove me nuts about All Recipes is that so many of the comments would go something like this:

This dish sucked!  I subbed peanut butter for the broccoli, nixed the flour and doubled the tomato sauce, and it was TERRIBLE! (1 out of 5 stars)

I mean, really?  That’s totally not the recipe, so how can you rate it?

This was back when I would follow every single recipe to a T for fear of messing it up.

Now I’ve really let myself go and mess with most cooking and baking recipes, even if they’re for something I’ve never made.

Like risotto.

Flash Mob at the Farmers’ Market!

You know what a flash mob is, right?  When seemingly random people spontaneously break out into song and/or dance in crowded public places?

(from Pearl FM’s facebook page)

Apparently a full orchestra can do this.

I had my doubts when called up Thursday afternoon about participating in one of these on Saturday morning in San Antonio.  We’ll have our instruments…won’t that seem obvious?  Are we memorizing the music?  Is it going to be super cheesy? (surprisingly not/no/cheese is good)

The group was made up of San Antonio Symphony members, students, teachers, and other area freelancers like me.  The plan was to run through the William Tell Overture a couple times at 9am at Trinity University.  After that we would all gradually head over to the popular farmers’ market at Pearl Brewery and were told to wander around ignoring each other.  At 11am, the english horn player would start playing her solo; we were beginning at the middle of the overture.

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Crostata!

This is my first month as a Daring Baker!  If you are unfamiliar with this group, a recipe is chosen on the first of each month and everyone posts their results on the 27th.  They usually choose recipes that are out of most people’s comfort zones, which was very appealing to me!  Daring Cooks are also part of the Daring Kitchen, and neither group seems to have a limit if any of you are interested in joining.

The 2010 November Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Simona of briciole. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers to make pasta frolla for a crostata. She used her own experience as a source, as well as information from Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well.

I used version 1 of the pasta frolla recipe, which can be found here.

Pumpkin Cream Pie

Happy Black Friday!  Err, except I didn’t participate in that, as usual.  I’m more of a last-minute kind of gal, and shopping for Christmas almost a month in advance is way too well-planned for me.

I did plan out this Thanksgiving’s bakefest as evidenced in my last post, and thank goodness!  Everything always takes longer than I anticipate, especially since I’m super slow in the kitchen.  I think it’s a perfectionist thing, and I tend to take out/put ingredients back as I need them.

Pumpkin French Toast

Yesterday I went to a David Sedaris reading/signing and he was hilarious.  If you ever get the chance to see him, GO.  He read some stories from his new book (Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk), shared snippets from his diary, and answered several questions.  Though I’ve read a few of his books, I haven’t read the new one yet, but really liked what we heard from it.  It basically seems to be a collection of short stories from the perspectives of personified animals and insects, but coming from the mind of David Sedaris, they’re super clever and funny.

My friend and I waited in line for the signing, but there were SO many people there that we hardly moved.  He had asked people to tell him jokes (he’s been collecting them this book tour!), so I’m guessing that’s part of why it took so long.  Oh, and we didn’t manage to stick around the whole time.  I have no idea how long he stayed there to sign books, but it had to have been at least until the store closed!

Thai Red Curry Squash Soup

You know when you’re looking through a bunch of recipes, and you find one that sounds really good, but the main ingredient won’t be in season for at least another 6+ months?

That’s what happened when I ran into this soup.  I was perusing the the archives of the great 101 Cookbooks when Thai-spiced Pumpkin Soup caught my eye.  It was March.  However, with Thai curries being among my absolute favorite dishes, this one did not slip my mind, even three seasons later.

Recently while looking for Thanksgiving recipe ideas on The Bitten Word, I ran across a similar recipe from Food & Wine.  It was a bit more fussy, but I liked the sound of some of the additional ingredients.  What I ended up doing was sort of combining the two, and I was happy with the results!

Pumpkin, Sage, and Brown Butter Muffins

I had a brilliant idea.  Savory pumpkin bread!   With sage!   And brown butter!  Boy, was I onto something!

Then google burst my bubble.  Sorry, hon, but Martha’s been there, done that.

Figures.  Fine…I’ll make muffins!

I’m not complaining, though.  I’ve found her recipes to be pretty foolproof, and thank goodness for that because I was kind of a fool when I made these yesterday.

Usually, I reread amounts and steps in recipes in an OCD way just to be sure I’m doing the right thing.  Yesterday, my mind was so distracted mainly because I was hungry and hadn’t been properly caffeinated yet.  Why I decided to bake first instead of address these issues is a mystery.