MINI PUMPKIN PIE PANCAKE MUFFINS

 

I'm so behind in my posts sharing. I have had a post each day this week so far. It's been a while since I did that. I got behind two weeks ago when we had our stair railings and spindles replaced. They look so good. I'll share some before and after pictures at the end of the post.

We were lucky that we could reuse the posts and only had to replace the railings and the spindles. That meant work for me though because Chris Webb who replaced the carpet in our house 14 years ago and laid down hardwood flooring doesn't do any painting. Fortunately I do paint and usually enjoy it.

I had to sand the posts that had been stained and then paint them. "Iron Ore" was recommended to me for the color paint to use and it was perfect. I also had to prime and then paint the new oak railings. I did that painting in the garage so that meant my Ford EcoSport had to stay outside for about 5 days. Poor thing.

It took Chris and his assistant Jake 2-1/2 days to do their part. After they left I had to patch and touch up where the old railings had been attached to the posts. I'm so glad I had painted everything first so I only had to touch up. I can't imagine having to paint everything after they finished.

It looks so pretty, I'm just sorry we waited so long to decide to do them.

Now about the recipe. I had found the recipe and even though the recipe was only supposed to make 16 (I got one extra.) and I ask everyone to bring 3 dozen of their treat for the Cafe Treats, I just wanted to make the recipe. It sounded so good. I also made it sugar-free by using stevia for the 1/4 cup sugar.

They turned out so good, too. It would be easy to just double the recipe, if you needed more. My chocolate chips were not real big, but if yours are, I would recommend using mini-chips so there will more in the mix.

PRINT RECIPE.

MINI PUMPKIN PIE PANCAKE MUFFINS

1      cup buttermilk baking and pancake mix

1/4   cup sugar

1      teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

1      egg, beaten

1/4   cup milk

1/4   cup canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix)

1/4   cup semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a 24-mini muffin cups pan with cooking spray. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, stir together the baking mix, sugar, pumpkin pie spice, egg, milk, and pumpkin until blended.

(If your baking mix looks lumpy, break up the lumps with a whisk, first.)

Stir in the chocolate chips. (You could use mini chocolate chips, if you like.)

Divide the batter among the mini muffin cups. I use my tablespoon (cookie) scoop to fill the cups. I made 17 mini muffins. So that the muffins will bake evenly, pour a little water in the empty cups.

Bake about 10 minutes or until golden brown and tops spring back when lightly touched with your fingers.

Cool 5 minutes before removing from the pan to a wire rack. I used a plastic knife to run around the edge of the muffins to aid in removing them from the pan.

Before pictures of our stair railings and wooden spindles:

This picture shows the before and after in the same picture. The spindles on the landing haven't been replaced yet, but the other ones have (with the 1 spoon wrought iron spindles). That's Charlie in the picture checking out the work after Chris and Jake left for the day.

After pictures...

Charlie and Parker, our cats, can't go between these new spindles since they are up to code now with no more than 4 inches between spindles. They loved going between the wooden ones. Here are some pictures of Charlie studying the new ones and disappointed he can't go between.

HELP! MY MUFFINS STUCK TO THE PAPER LINERS

 Don't you just hate it when you make muffins or cupcakes and when you get one to eat and start to pull off the paper liner, it is stuck to the muffin or cupcake? Me, too.

Well, now I know what to do. 

I made some gluten-free banana bread mini-muffins this weekend to take to church for the Cafe Treats. I have been having problems cleaning my mini-muffin pan lately which is a big pain in the wazoo. So when I started to make the muffins from the King Arthur box mix, it said to grease the muffin pan or use paper liners. Since I recently bought some paper liners for  mini-muffins to make clean-up easier, I decided to do that.

I know from experience to spray the paper liners with nonstick cooking spray before filling the cups and I did that expecting that to do the trick. WELL, it didn't. After the mini-muffins had cooled completely, I thought I would see how they tasted.

You can imagine my disgust when I picked at the side of the paper liner and it was stuck to the muffin. I was so upset because the mix had made 52 mini-muffins that I knew would last me at least two Sundays for the Cafe Treats I just sat down on my glider couch and was silent.

After a bit, I decided to google to see if I could find a solution for my problem and of course links came up. I have to say I didn't read them all. The first one I read said to spray your liners first, but I had done that and that didn't keep them from sticking. Then I read one answer that said to freeze them for 5 to 10 minutes and then twist them out of the liner.

I didn't go any farther, but decided I would give that a try.

Well, that worked for about 95 percent of them. The ones that didn't work well, may have been the four I filled before I realized I had forgotten to spray the liners. This was the second pan I was making. Since I was making a banana bread muffin and the batter was a little bit different consistency than a cake mix make be, I noticed the four that didn't do great, had spaces in them so those spaces weren't even touching the liners. Bottom line --  I felt the experience was successful and will remember that again if I have the problem. 

This is what I actually did.

 We recently got a new refrigerator freezer that is about 4 cubic feet smaller. We lost space in the freezer. The compartment is narrower. I have a cookie sheet that fit perfectly in my old freezer, but is too wide for my new one. So I had to find something else that I could use to quick-freeze my baked goods. Solution? I have a tempered glass cutting board that works great. 

After the muffins had cooled completely, I spaced some on the glass board so they weren't touching, closed the freezer, and set the timer for 10 minutes.

When I timer went off, I removed two muffins at a time instead of all of them. It was warm enough in my kitchen that I was afraid the muffins would thaw since they hadn't been in the freezer that long. It took me a minute or two to do all of them and they did get easier to peel by the end. Saying that, I think I would do it again for 10 minutes to start.

I carefully worked with each one, by holding the muffin with one (left) hand and then using my fingernails on my other hand to get the paper started to separate from the muffin. I didn't rush this procedure because I wanted to not disturb the muffin as much as possible. As I worked around each muffin, I peeled back the paper as it appeared to separate best for that muffin.

And you know what? No one noticed so I must I have done a good job. What I did hear was lots of yummies when they bit into them. 

Here are some pictures I took during the process.

 

This last picture shows three of the four that I didn't consider a success. You can see the spaces I was talking about. Some of the holes were made because some of the muffin still stuck to the paper liner.

Here is a picture of my tempered glass board that I am using to fast freeze some of the muffins for next Sunday. 

Frozen, now I can place them in a freezer bag and they won't mess up until next Sunday. That means I won't have to make something gluten-free next Saturday.

CREAMY PEANUT BUTTER PIE

If you've been following my blog, you know that I have been leading the Cafe Treats at PWUMC since the beginning of year. When I started it, I decided it would be a nut-free zone so no one would have to be concerned about choosing something that might have nuts that they were allergic to. Because the Cafe Treats have taken up most of my cooking time, that means whenever I am searching out for interesting desserts in my cookbooks, I have had to pass up a lot of recipes because they contain peanut butter or nuts of some sort.

Yesterday it was my turn to hostess the Quilters' Canasta group and since I needed a dessert I thought I would take advantage of the allergy-free group and make something with peanut butter. 

Sometimes when I am on the hunt for a dessert for a particular occasion, I have a hard time finding just what I want to make. Monday night when I was looking, I must have found four or five recipes that sounded really good. It was really hard to decide which one I wanted to make, but I finally chose this fabulous Creamy Peanut Butter Pie from Paula Dean Cuts the Fat cookbook. 

My apologies to Paula as I had to use regular cream cheese because I didn't have the Neufchatel that she used in her recipe. I also used a chocolate cut pie crust instead of the graham cracker piecrust because I had it and I thought it would go great with the peanut butter. My whipped topping wasn't completely thawed when I got ready to add it to the peanut butter/cream cheese mixture, so I just waited and later spread the rest on top and then melted some chocolate chips to drizzle across the top. It looked so pretty. All of my friends told me how delicious it was.

PRINT RECIPE.

 

CREAMY PEANUT BUTTER PIE

1       package (8 ounces) low-fat cream cheese (Neufchatel), at room temperature

2       tablespoons powdered sugar

1/2    teaspoon vanilla extract

1       cup creamy regular or natural peanut butter, softened

1       container (8 ounces) sugar-free or regular frozen whipped topping, thawed

1       9 - inch  prepared graham cracker piecrust

In a bowl of an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese, powdered sugar, and vanilla until smooth.

Add the peanut butter and beat, scraping the sides of the bowl,

until thoroughly combined.

Using a rubber spatula, gently fold in the whipped topping in two batches. (I didn't do a very good job of dividing the whipped topping in half so had to work a little harder.)

Spoon the filling into the piecrust and smooth the top with a rubber spatula.

Refrigerate until firm, at least 2 hours. (I made mine the day before.) The next morning I spread the extra whipped topping on the top.

Serve cold or at room temperature.

Note: I reserved several spoonfuls of the whipped topping and spread it on top of the cold pie. I didn't quite spread to the edge.

Then I melted about 20 dark chocolate chips with a heaping 1/2 teaspoon of shortening in the microwave and

then drizzled it over the top. With the shortening, it hardened as it cooled but tasted great with the peanut butter and whipped topping.

After everyone left, Wayne and I went to the Platte County Fair. It is the first time we have gone. It is the longest continuing county fair west of the Mississippi River beginning in 1863. I find that so fascinating that during the Civil War, people in the county were getting together for a fair. Anyway, I had the opportunity to wear my first ever pair of cowgirl boots that I bought a couple of years ago but just never got around to wearing them. I didn't get to ride the Ferris Wheel but had to at least take a picture of it. There is a story about a certain young man who ran the Ferris Wheel in a carnival and the beautiful young woman he met and later married and had a daughter that they named Patricia that is very dear to my heart. 

It was a fun evening. I'm sorry it has taken us 15 years to get there.

PROATS

 There are times when I feel I could eat out every meal. You? Well, that lasts a few days until I find myself not really knowing where I want to go or what I want to eat.

I know this is a crazy way to start a post to grab your attention, but that's where I am (at) right now. 

I really wasn't looking for something to eat, but I didn't know what I wanted to eat for breakfast and was just scrolling through Facebook to see if anything had happened overnight or if a friend had posted something meaningful. I ended up checking out an ad (there are so many on Facebook now) that really wasn't an ad, but just an article from Women and Health on 50 healthy things to eat. Most of them weren't recipes per se - you know listing the ingredients and then what to do with them. I had to read the paragraph to read about it. 

There emphasis was on added protein to fill you up so you could make it to lunch without getting hungry and snacking. I missed some at the beginning because I didn't write down the information on the breakfast, but I did manage to get three written down before I lost the article.

With nothing better to do and my husband giving me a kiss goodbye before leaving to go play golf, I decided I would try one of them.  Proats is short for Protein Oatmeal. I had all of the ingredients and it didn't take much time at all to make it, so it won out over the other two. I will have to try them another day.

The "recipe" just called for rolled oats so I used Old Fashioned Oats. That gave the dish a little rougher taste than using the quick oats, but I might try quick oats sometime to see how I like the texture. Since they suggested adding nuts, berries, chocolate chips, or seeds on top, I did break up some pecans and added a spoonful of sea salt & caramel chips to mine.

The result was a different sorta breakfast for me (which is what I was wanting) and it did fill me up so I went until lunch without any snacking.

PRINT RECIPE.

PROATS or PROTEIN OATMEAL

1/2   cup milk (I used skim milk)

1/3   cup rolled oats (I used Old Fashioned)

pinch of salt

1      beaten egg

berries, nuts, chocolate chips, or seeds (optional)

In a medium sized microwaveable bowl, combine the milk, oats, and salt.

Cook on High for 1.5 minutes in the microwave. 

Remove from the microwave and stir in the beaten egg.

Return to the microwave and cook for another 30 to 45 seconds. I cooked mine the 45 seconds. (The very center of mine hadn't completely cooked, 

so I stirred the mixture and cooked for 15 more seconds.)

Can top with berries, nuts, chocolate chips, or seeds if you like.

Enjoy!

UPDATE...

my breakfast thus morning. Topped it with some unsweetened coconut, sugar-free dark chocolate chips, and broken up pecans. Yummy

I ended up taking a walk in the neighborhood and then came back and sat in my swing and enjoyed the breeze and my flowers I have recently planted. Oh! And the birds singing. There were so many. 

I also received a text from my granddaughter Madison and we "talked" for a while. All-in-all it was a very enjoyable morning.