Pumpkin Scones

Hi there, yeah this is another pumpkin recipe, yep. Over the weekend we have pumpkin pancakes, pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting, pumpkin scones, and I finished it up with some pumpkin oatmeal on Monday. So I consider only two pumpkin recipes conservative.

I found this recipe on Pinterest but it originally hailed from Brown Eyed Baker. She Does a glaze for them. I’d rather eat them coated in melty butter so that gets skipped for us. No one seems to mind as they slather butter on them. They are also tasty with jam. I feel like the glaze limits them to more more of dessert rather than scone that go either way. They would be good with some ham.

Pumpkin Scones
2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon clove
1/4 teaspoon ginger
6 tablespoons cold butter, cut up
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
3 tablespoons of milk or milk substitute
1 large egg

Preheat oven to 425 and butter baking sheet. Put the dry ingredients in a food processor, blitz to mix. Add butter and pulse until it is incorporated and looks like coarse cornmeal and the largest butter pieces are the size of small peas. Add in the wet ingredients pulse until combined. Form into a 4 x 12 inch rectangle and cut into triangles. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or a toothpick comes out clean.

Purple Polish and Polka Dots

So yesterday was supposed to be Polishes of August which you can tell didn’t happen since I did not post yesterday and I haven’t filmed in a couple of weeks. I got sick and had relatives in town the next week. So filming never happened.

Wednesday I couldn’t but down my book and ended up reading all evening… Can you see the trend. But I broke that trend last night and did some nail art. I pinned something a while back that uses different colours than I did.

I decided on a nice lavender purple by Nars called Pokerface. This nail polish was an impulse buy on Sephora there it was on sale and purple. Of course I bought it and have been very happy that I did. So love the colour. I decided to use that as the main colour on the non-dotted fingers.

For the dots I used China Glaze’s Lemon Fizz, SOPI’s What Aura You Going to Wear?, and Sephora’s Jacuzzi. I do wish I would have added in a coral or melon orange colour for a bit more pop. But this was an easy way to do something different than a normal mani. Plus with all the holidays coming up this wold be very easy to adapt for any of them by changing the colours used.

Coconut Pumpkin Bread

Well here it is. The pumpkin bread recipe I promised you last week. This is one of my favorite pumpkin bread recipes. It came from a Bozeman Co-op circular and boy is it good. This quick bread has a silky smooth texture that is so wonderful. The pumpkin and the coconut work so well together and have I mentioned the texture recently because it is seriously lovely.

It also tastes good along with that awesome texture you have a winning recipe. The original recipe had coconut flakes in it. I only made it that way once and everyone voted no bits of anything in this recipe. Usually I’m all about some pecans in my pumpkin bread but not this one. Keep it smooth and silky and pumpkiny.

The coconut is not a predominate flavor so don’t worry if coconut is not your most favorite. I have two alleged coconut hates I say alleged as they scarf down, Anzac Biscuits and One Cup of Everything Cookies both which have the dreaded coconut. They also love this bread. I doubled mine when I made it.

Coconut Pumpkin Bread makes two loaves
3 1/2 cups flour
2 cups brown sugar
2/3 cups sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 1/2 cinnamon
15 ounces of pumpkin puree
1 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup coconut milk

Preheat oven to 350. Grease two 8×4 loaf pans. Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl. Stir together. Add pumpkin and stir that in. Next add oil and coconut milk and mix that in well. Pour into loaf pans and cook for an hour to and hour and fifteen minutes or a tooth pick comes out clean. Let cook 10 minutes in the pan and then turn them out to finish cooling.

Hey where’s the recipe, dude?

There isn’t one this week.  I attempted to make a variety of recipes this week and each one of them was included a key ingredient that we did not have. Finally on Wednesday after a rather unproductive day of not getting much done other than an Etsy banner and something else I gave up for this week.  We shall get back on track next week with some pumpkin bread.  because you have to try it as the texture is so extremely marvelous and it tastes good too.

I’ll leave you will a picture of some accidental nail art.  I was painting and slopped some Chromium Green on my toe.

Oh Snap! Bought the wrong nail product!

Have you ever not really paid attention to how a name was spelled? Well I did that the other day while ordering Nailtques only that’s not what I ordered. Instead of Nailtques it was Nail Tek, oops. They are supposed to do the same thing. I am currently going to find out how well this product works.

So remember to actually pay attention to the little details when ordering. One goo thing that is coming out of this little snafu is that later on I can do a review and comparison between Nailtques, Nail Tek, and Essie’s Protein base.

Chocolate Drop Cookies with Frosting

Chocolate Drop Cookies are well chocolatey. The cookies are pretty neutral for for how dark they are. They really start to shine when you frost them. They go really fast here and I do mean fast. I am giving the amounts for a double batch just because the size of the cookies they suggest is too small, as in bite sized. I want a bigger cookie for the frosting.

Chocolate Drops Cookies from Bon Appetit
4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup shortening
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted
2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
1 cup sour cream
2 teaspoons vanilla

Preheat oven to 350. Melt chocolate and shortening together. Put brown sugar in your mixing bowl and add chocolate mixture,and eggs, beat well. Add flour, baking soda, and salt mix well. Next add sour cream and vanilla, mix until incorporated. Drop on cookies sheets and bake for 10 minutes. Let cool and frost

Chocolate Frosting
1/2 cup coffee
3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted
Powdered sugar, enough to make thick.

Mix it all up and frost away.

July’s Nail Polish Video

Updates and Changes

I have slowly realized that two times a week on top of building two businesses (The Cooking Coach and My Queen of Wands), it’s a little hectic here. This is the fun thing I do and when it starts to feel like work I know I need to do something different. Moving the posting date for the blogs didn’t work, it’s just a bit too much.

For me writing 5 blogs a week is between three sites is too much. I’ve been scaling back in other areas to create more space for program creation, art, and well baking and nail polish. The goal is to enjoy all aspects of what I am doing and try to find my my bliss (to use a Joseph Campbellism) and follow it.

So here is the current plan! Bloging once a week here and alternating between baking and nail polish.

Peanut Butter Snack Cake

While going through some old cooking magazines I came across an issue of Cooking Light from 1991. As I was leafing through it there was a section on snack cakes. I love cake so I had to stop and take a look at the article, which has some promising recipes.

Lemon poppy seed, chocolate, a pineapple right side up cake, and this weeks feature Peanut Butter Cake. The Peanut Butter cake is not in your face peanut buttery but you know it is peanut flavored. It has a lovely moist crumb that makes eating it a joy. Plus you have the bonus of chocolate chips. I used a dark chocolate chip, so good with the peanut butter.

This is an easy straight forward cake to make. It would be great for potlucks or anytime you need or want a nice cake in a hurry.

Peanut Butter Snack Cake
3 cups flour
1 cup brown sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons butter, melted
4 tablespoons peanut butter
1 1/2 cups milk or milk substitute
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 and grease a 13×9 pan. Put first four ingredients into bowl, mix up and make a well. Add the butter and the rest of your wet ingredients and beat until smooth. Pour into 13×9 pan, smooth out and sprinkle chocolate chips over top. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes or toothpick comes out clean.

Metallic Nail Art

I was rather sad when I found out they did away with the SOPI line at Sephora since it had a few colours that I love. Yeah it’s old news but I am still kind of bummed anyways and feel kind of bad as I do have a lot of their colours and use them frequently. Which means they show up on the blog and you can’t get them anymore.

Mermaid to Order is one of those favorites such a lovely foil duo chrome, if you come across it anywhere snatch it up. I wanted to use metallic to do some nail art and I wanted to limit myself to how many colours. The two I picked are Mermaid to order and China Glaze’s Swing Baby. Love both of them and I like the contrast the two shades provide.