Pumpkin Pancakes

I love cooking and I love pumpkin... so you guessed it, that means we make a lot of pumpkin flavoured things around here! Our most recent pumpkin treat was pumpkin pancakes. Made from scratch these pancakes are wonderfully healthy, deliciously moist, and they freeze and re-heat well too. It's also a great way to sneak some extra veggies into your little ones!

These pancakes are a big hit with the boy-o too because he loves finger foods and being able to feed himself. Because of all the spices in them they're quite flavourful even without any toppings added.

Here's the recipe:

Pumpkin Pancakes

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 cup canned pumpkin purée (not pumpkin pie filling)
1 1/4 cups whole milk
1 egg
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
Vegetable oil

Directions:

1. Sift together the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, ginger and sugar in a large bowl. Set it aside.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together the pumpkin with the milk, egg and melted butter. Slowly add the wet mix into the dry ingredients and stir to combine. Allow the batter to rest at room temperature for 20-30 minutes.
3. Heat a large frying pan over medium-low heat and add just enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan, allowing it to heat for 2 to 3 minutes.
4. Cook pancakes of your desired size until bubbles appear in the center, then flip them once and continue cooking until no longer doughy in the center.


These pancakes are amazingly delicious with some maple syrup added on, but you can play around to find your favourite flavour combinations. And don't forget, you can freeze any leftovers in a freezer safe food storage bag and simply pop thawed pancake into the toaster to re-heat them.

Fall Fun: Pumpkin Patch

Last weekend we started off Fall right by taking a trip out to a pumpkin patch. We had a lot of fun, and they had all kinds of neat decorations made with hay bales and signs. The boy-o loved running around in the field and he kept trying to pick up the pumpkins with his strong man grunts. The pumpkin patch also had all kinds of varieties that I'd never seen before--some of my favourites were the "warty pumpkin" and some gourds that looked like flowers and jelly fish.

They had hay bales painted to look like different things too. They had a rooster one, a spider, a group of three pumpkins, and some angry birds ones! Definitely some creative decorations for sure. They also had a corn maze and a pumpkin lawn bowling section where you tried to knock down 2L pop bottles by rolling a pumpkin at them!

My sister was down visiting last weekend, so we made a big group family trip out with my parents too. They provide you with huge wagons to load your pumpkins in, and the boy-o was pretty determined that he wanted to help push!

And like all good farms they had some painted cut-outs too! We look pretty spooky don't you think?

It was a really great way to start off the Fall season for us, and hopefully we'll get a chance to go apple picking sometime soon too. We've already put some of the pumpkin to good use making pumpkin pancakes! Mmmmm..... 

Remember--It's Everyone's Halloween!

If you've ever given out candy on Halloween night before, there are probably some things that drive you a little crazy: the kids who don't say Thank-You, the kids who don't bother wearing a costume, and the kids who are definitely way too old to be going Trick or Treating. Then you get kids that are the total opposite: they're incredibly polite, have excellent (and often home-made costumes), and are still really excited about "Halloween" and not just getting free candy.

Inside Looking Out- Halloween 2013

I'll admit it, I used to be one of those people. And sometimes I'm still one of those people, especially if I get a bunch of kids in a row who don't say Thank-You, until I catch myself and remind myself that it's "Everyone's Halloween." So what am I talking about? I'm talking about a little meme that was circulating a few years ago around Facebook and the blog-o-sphere that received some very mixed responses. Some people argued that this was taking "political correctness" too far and was just an excuse for rude children with no manners. Others applauded the reminder and agreed that it was important to be accepting to everyone, and that sometimes there are reasons we can't see that affect the behaviour of the children visiting our door.

This is the message that was circulating:

 

You can make up your own mind on whether or not you think it's a helpful reminder or a cop-out, but this Halloween I'll be reminding myself "It's Everyone's Halloween" if I find myself getting frustrated--because when it comes down to it, Halloween is about having fun, and who am I to judge the quality of someone else's fun?

This Halloween is an extra special one for us since it is the boy-o's first Halloween! He'll be dressed up as a Frog and I have no doubts that he'll be smothered in kisses to test for a Prince! We also decided that we should stick him in a pumpkin--and it was a great success!

 

Happy Halloween!!

Pumpkin Toffee Muffins/Cupcakes

I LOVE pumpkin. Pumpkin may well be one of my favourite flavours, partly because when pumpkin goodies are about it means that Fall will be here soon with its softer sun and cooler temperatures. My hubby however is not so keen on pumpkin, which means I don't usually bother making pumpkin stuff at home because I know he won't eat it. I was willing to take that chance with these delicious muffins though knowing that I could freeze them and just take a few out at a time if he didn't like them.

Well, that plan fell through, because even my pumpkin-hating husband has declared that this muffins are delicious and that I have to share.

I decided to take these amazing muffins to the next level and added some cream cheese icing to the top to "cupcake" them, and the blending of the pumpkin spice, toffee, and cream cheese will make your taste buds dance for J-O-Y! (and my husband is living proof that these cupcakes will convert even the most adamant pumpkin hater!)

Pumpkin Toffee Muffins/Cupcakes

Ingredients:
                                                  

4 eggs

1 1/2  cups sugar

1 (16 ounce) can pumpkin (or 2 cups fresh prepared pumpkin)                                                   

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup oil                                    

3 cups flour (I use 2 cups WW, 1 cup white)                                                   

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons cinnamon 

2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice                                                  

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup SKOR bits

Cream Cheese icing (optional)

 

 

Directions

1. Pre-heat oven to 400 degree F.
2. In large mixing bowl beat eggs, sugar, pumpkin, vanilla and oil until smooth.
3. Mix dry ingredients together in separate bowl.
4. Combine dry mix into pumpkin mixture. Fold in SKOR bits.
5. Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups 3/4 full
6. Bake at 400 F for 16-20 minutes.
7. Remove from heat and cool completely. Frost with cream cheese icing if desired.

 

I decided to make some regular sized muffins as well as some little minis. This recipe is basically *already* doubled, so you'll get A LOT of muffins. It made 24 regular sized muffins, as well as 12 mini bite sized muffins. So make sure you use a really large bowl to mix it all together or you'll be sloshing over the sides!

 

If you want to freeze them, hold off on icing them, and freeze them as "muffins." You can always add cream cheese icing to them later when you want to take them out. I like these both with and without the icing, so you won't be disappointed either way!