Sweet Suppertime

heavy on the butter and sugar...

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

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Sunday breakfasts are a favorite for me and my family. Depending on our church schedule, I usually end up with extra time to bake something extra delicious. This past Sunday morning called for Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins.

As I gathered my ingredients to make these delicious fall muffins, I realized I was about one cup short of chocolate chips. Seeing as how I had refilled my chocolate chip canister earlier this week, I imagine that more than one pair of little hands found their way into the jar. Luckily, we had about a dozen fun-sized Hershey bars leftover from recent activity. So my girls and I chopped those up to mix in and saved the 1/4 cup of chocolate chips for sprinkling on top. Adaptability is the name of the game around here! The chopped-up chocolate chunks were delicious in this recipe and many other substitutions would work just as well. I’m thinking about trying white chocolate or cinnamon chips but you could easily omit the chips completely and have pure pumpkin muffins.

Here’s hoping you have extra time this week for extra delicious Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

Serving Size:
16 Muffins
Time:
35
Difficulty:
East

Ingredients

  • 2 C flour
  • 1 t. baking soda
  • 2 t. pumpkin pie spice
  • 1/2 t. salt
  • 1/4 c. milk
  • 1/2 c. vegetable oil
  • 1/2 c. sugar
  • 1/2 c. light brown sugar
  • 1 1/2 c. canned pumpkin puree
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 c. chocolate chips (reserve a few for topping the muffins)

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 425 and line a 12 count muffin tin and a 6 count muffin tin with paper or silicone tin liners.
  2. Mix flour, baking soda, pumpkin pie spice, and salt together in a bowl and set aside.
  3. In another bowl mix milk, oil, sugars, pumpkin puree, and eggs until well blended.
  4. Add wet ingredients to the dry and mix gently, only until just combined.
  5. Add chocolate chips and gently stir until incorporated.
  6. Fill tins almost all the way full* and bake for 5 minutes, reduce the heat to 350 and continue baking another 15-18 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

*because this is such a heavy batter as long as you leave about 1/4″ space from the top of the liner the muffins will puff up, not over the edges

The Mystery of the Missing Donuts: Baked Pumpkin Spice Donuts

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When September rolls around here in Utah sometimes it doesn’t feel like the ushering in of Autumn. We’ve been known to have temperatures well into the 90’s, or early freezes and snow flurries depending on the year. Sometimes all you have is the word, September to remind you that the seasons are changing. But a pumpkin spiced donut helps too.

We first whipped up a batch of these on September 1st, just to make sure we kicked off fall right. They were worth waking up extra early on a Tuesday morning to make sure my first grader had cinnamon sugar in the corners of her mouth as she skipped off to school. I guess mandatory masks have their plus sides.

We only waited a few days for another batch, a breezy Saturday morning where you could almost smell the leaves changing colors. We savored the first batch, eating all six before they cooled, and I left the remaining on the kitchen counter. We had a few to take to grandmas and a few for later. I knew the donuts wouldn’t make it through the day but I was surprised after loading the girls up the car to find the plate completely empty. No donuts for later, and none to share at grandmas house.

I began a frantic search for the eight missing donuts, after interrogating each child and deciding the two-year-old was the likeliest culprit. We searched in cabinets, toy baskets, garbage bins, anywhere we thought those stubby two-year-old arms could easily reach. After a half-hour of searching not a single donut turned up. We couldn’t even find cinnamon sugar evidence anywhere. With no real evidence, we came to the conclusion that she fed them one by one to Rico, our Great Pyrenees. In fact, the lack of evidence is what led us to that conclusion, it was all licked up, every last crumb.

Trying to find the humor while living my own “who stole the cookies from the cookie jar” moment would’ve been easier if these pumpkin spice donuts weren’t so perfectly delicious. Thankfully, enough time has passed now, and enough batches of donuts have been eaten in the meantime, that we can laugh about it now. And whenever I have a half dozen of these lovelies baking in the oven without fail Rico appears at the door, looking extra drooly and expectant. I can’t blame him.

**You will need a donut pan! Don’t have one? I’d suggest you invest! I bought mine at King Arthur Flour. Don’t want to buy one? I saw a great tutorial on how to make your own here

Baked Pumpkin Spice Donuts

Serving Size:
16-18
Time:
1hr
Difficulty:
Beginner

Ingredients

  • 15 oz. can of pumpkin puree
  • 3/4 c. brown sugar
  • 1/3 c. vegetable oil
  • 1/3 c. buttermilk
  • 4 T. melted butter
  • 3 eggs
  • 3 1/4 c. flour
  • 1/2 t. salt
  • 2 1/2 t. baking powder
  • 1/4 t. baking soda
  • 2 t. pumpkin pie spice
  • CINNAMON SUGAR COATING
  • 3/4 c melted butter
  • 3 t. cinnamon
  • 3/4 c sugar

Directions

  1. Mix the pumpkin, brown sugar, oil, buttermilk, eggs, and melted butter.
  2. In a separate bowl mix the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and pumpkin pie spice
  3. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, mix only until combined. Over mixing will make the donuts tough and dense.
  4. Spoon the batter into a large piping bag, or a ziplock bag with a corner snipped off.
  5. Pipe the batter into a greased donut pan, filling them about 3/4 full
  6. Bake at 350 F for 18-25 minutes (depending on your oven) or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
  7. Remove onto a cooling rack
  8. For the cinnamon sugar coating, mix cinnamon and sugar together,
  9. Dip both sides of the donut in melted butter and then in the cinnamon sugar mixture.

Momma’s Pancakes

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Pancakes, Old Fashioned Pancakes, Homemade Pancakes, Sweet Suppertime, Pancakes Truth. My mom cooked a hot breakfast every day of my life.   Bacon and eggs with hash browns, waffles, milk toast and gravy, sausage with scrambled eggs and toast and every once in awhile she tried to pass off oatmeal as a hot breakfast. To this day I don’t know if I ever woke up to an alarm or if it was always to the smell of something delicious coming from the kitchen and the soft sounds of her working quietly so that I would get that last few minutes of sleep.  It wasn’t just a grab and go breakfast either.  We were called to breakfast.  We had prayer and we ate together.  Some of that changed as we began to get older and participate in activities that called us early to school, but I never left a dark home.  No matter how early I had to be gone she was up and had something waiting for me to eat.  I’ve tried to be that mom to my own children but I have to admit that I haven’t hated that my husband and children love cold cereal.

So–pancakes.  She encouraged me to memorize this recipe.  She was smart that way.  “Remember Shanon,” she’d say, “when you don’t have time or money for a lot of other things you will always be able to feed your family pancakes.” Spoken from experience?  I think so.  She would be 92 this year.  I miss her.

This memorized pancake recipe has come in handy on so many occasions.  My own little family has lived through a few tough financial times ourselves, but I don’t think our kids ever really knew.  Serving breakfast for dinner was fun to them and cheap for us.   My youngest son loves big pancakes, my husband loves silver dollar (size) pancakes and I am somewhere in between–so we make all shapes and sizes.  My favorite size of all?  The little baby tiny one my mom would make and put on my plate.  It was the size of a nickle, crisped in the butter she would use on the pan, and it reminded me that she knew me and what I loved.  It was like a punctuation mark on my stack of pancakes that said, “I love you Shanon.”

Recently my  son Jake found himself in Ukraine and living on a budget.  He emailed me one day and asked if I would send him the pancake recipe.  It’s a recipe he used on his mission, but since I hadn’t made him memorize it he gave me a call.  I didn’t mind. Turns out that pancakes can save you money anywhere in the world.    As I was getting ready for this post and talking to Jake about my mom’s pancake recipe he told me of a Ukrainian tradition that involves a pancake week and told me that he had passed my recipe along to a beautiful Ukranian girl.  Her name is Alyona and she’s the reason that Jake was in Ukraine.  Somehow it warms my heart to think that far away there’s a lovely girl making Momma’s Pancakes and that before too long she’ll be making pancakes for my son in Utah.

So–pancakes.

In a medium size bowl combine one egg, 1 1/4 cups milk, and 1/3 cup vegetable oil.  Whisk together until completely combined and get the egg completely beaten.

Old Fashioned Pancakes, Pancakes, Sweet Suppertime, If you want to go to all the trouble of sifting–go for it.  My mom didn’t with this recipe and that is good enough for me. Add 1 1/2 cups flour, 1/3 cup sugar and 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt.   If you don’t sift, sprinkle the baking powder and salt over the entire surface so it’s not all in one place.

Old Fashioned Pancakes, Easy Pancakes, Best Pancakes Whisk all ingredients together, but don’t over mix.  You want everything incorporated but it’s okay if there are small lumps in the batter.  I counted how many strokes I made with my whisk today and I came to 50 and stopped.  The batter should drizzle off of a spoon or whisk in a thick stream.  Too thin and you will have crepes–delicious no doubt–but we are making pancakes.  If the batter is too thick they won’t get done in the middle before burning.  This is why we always do a test pancake at our house.  Let the batter rest for about 5 minutes while you start to warm the syrup and get your pan ready.

pancake batter, pancakes, sweet suppertime Heat your favorite skillet on medium heat for about a minute. I almost always end up turning the heat down.  If you are wondering if your pan is about the right temperature, drop a droplet of water on the pan and see if it sort of skitters across.  Is skitters a word?  If it does, add about a tablespoon of butter or cooking oil to the pan to coat the cooking surface.  Sometimes I like to use a bit of extra butter because I LOVE crispy edges.    Drop, spoon or pour your pancake batter onto the pre-heated pan and watch for the edges of the pancake to solidify and the bubbles that are forming in the batter to pop and remain open.  This is when you flip the pancake.  This is where that test pancake comes in handy… it gives you time to adjust your temperature and it usually gives my dog breakfast. 🙂  Adjust the heat and thin or thicken your batter at this point.

Cooking Pancakes, Sweet Suppertime. Pancakes Turn the pancake and continue cooking until the pancake is firm and golden brown on the bottom.  This is a good time to drop on a few blueberries or sliced strawberries.   Go ahead and peek to see how it’s doing.  See that little nickel-size pancake?  I made that for myself. pancake, cooking pancakes, sweet suppertime Put your pancakes on a warm plate and serve them with butter and warm syrup.  Oh, and if you want…memorize the recipe.

Stack Of Pancakes, Pancakes, Homemade Pancakes, Sweet Suppertime

Homemade Pancakes, Pancakes, Old Fashioned Pancakes, Sweet Suppertime

 

Momma's Pancakes
 
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These pancakes cook up fluffy and delicious. What a perfect breakfast..or dinner! This recipe doubles really nicely.
Author:
Recipe type: Breakfast
Serves: makes 12
Ingredients
  • 1¼ cups milk
  • 1 egg
  • ⅓ cup vegetable oil
  • 1 cup flour
  • ⅓ cup sugar
  • 1½ teaspoons baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon salt
Instructions
  1. In a medium-sized bowl combine milk, egg and vegetable oil.
  2. Whisk until egg is well-beaten and incorporated into the milk and oil.
  3. Add/sift together flour, sugar and baking powder and salt.
  4. Whisk just until nicely brought together, about 50 strokes.
  5. Let stand 5 minutes.
  6. Heat a skillet to medium heat.
  7. Drop or pour batter onto the heated skillet in the size you wish. This recipe makes about twelve ¼ cup pancakes.
  8. If adding blueberries or strawberries, sprinkle them on the top at this point.
  9. Cook on one side until bubbles form and begin to pop and hold open, checking the underside of pancake to prevent burning. Adjust heat as necessary.
  10. Flip the pancake and cook the other side until golden brown.
  11. Serve with butter and your favorite syrup.