Julie and Tony's Pumpkin Bakestravaganza

How's that for an event name?

Tony and I had been discussing the possibility of a pumpkin-themed bake-a-thon for some time, and it finally happened last weekend! We may have baked enough items to blanket the entirety of Medford with a cinnamon-and-squash aroma, but even if that didn't happen we surely baked enough items to take care of a week's (and then some) breakfasts and desserts. So, what glorious bounty was produced?

We started with some cutely-named "cinnapastries", which are exactly what their name suggests - pastries flavored with cinnamon. (They use more butter and brown sugar than cinnamon, but those ingredients do not present such superior naming options.) The dough can be made from scratch, but premade pie crust is easier.

• 2 pre-made pie crusts (1 package)
• 1 1/2 sticks butter, separated into 1 stick (softened) and two 2T portions (melted)
• lots of brown sugar
• lots of cinnamon

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Soften the stick of butter, and mix brown sugar in it until the result is uniform. Divide the mixture evenly among the 12 cups of a muffin pan.
3. Roll out the pie crusts, and let them reach room temperature. Spread each crust with the melted 2T butter. Sprinkle - or cover, if you're spice-obsessed like me - the melted butter with cinnamon, and then brown sugar.
4. Roll the crusts back up. Slice each roll/tube into 6 pieces. Place each piece into a cup of the pre-sugarbuttered muffin pan.
5. Bake the cinnapastries for 12-15 minutes. Let them cool for a while after in the pan, until the sugarbutter has hardened. Don't worry about any overflowing sugarbutter - there's still plenty in each cup to moisten and flavor the pastries.

These little treats, suggestive of miniature cinnamon buns, were quite buttery and sweet. The pie crust may look hard, but it was soft and chewy upon biting and essentially melted in my mouth. Each cinnapastry was 3 or 4 bites, but those bites packed the creamy pastry goodness and cinnamon warmth equivalent to a full-sized bun. I'll keep these in mind as bite-sized breakfast treats or cocktail-party desserts - and really, I can't think of a dessert that's easier to make. I also want to try a puff-pastry version.

Next up was the first recipe I made from the Flour cookbook! Flour's pumpkin muffins were an event-appropriate way to welcome the new book. I won't copy the recipe here, but its intricacies deserve some commentary. First of all, the recipe requests 3 T molasses. Neither Tony nor I had molasses, so we substituted the equivalent measure of maple syrup and threw in some brown sugar. Secondly, the recipe uses orange juice in place of traditional muffin moisturizers like oil or milk. Then, I tripled the cinnamon and added an extra dash of cloves.

The end result was truly unique. The orange juice really brightened the fresh pumpkin flavor and gave a pleasing hint of citrus zing to the squashy cake. The citrus was also great in tandem with the heavy spicing - cloved oranges, anyone? The muffins were beyond moist, but in a light and fresh way rather than the heavy way associated with oil. The syrup/sugar molasses substituion had no adverse effect on the muffins' consistency, but it did not add enough flavor. These muffins would benefit from molasses' robust, earthy heartiness - if only to take them away from the metaphorical farmers' market and closer to a cozy autumn hearth. Even with their fruit-and-vegetable quality, these muffins are still delicious - and the recipe makes a lot of them. The batter yielded 18 total muffins, 50% more than expected. I'm so glad I received an insight into the creative baking conducted at Flour, as well as a week's worth of breakfast delights. I've eaten these muffins for 7 days in a row, and I'm still not sick of them!

Our last treats were Pilgrim Pies - or, to those who don't give seasonal desserts seasonal names, pumpkin whoopie pies. Here is the recipe; remember to add my token tripling of cinnamon.

• 2 eggs
• 2 C light brown sugar
• 1 C vegetable oil
• 1 t vanilla
• 1 15oz can pumpkin
• 3 C flour
• 1/2 t cinnamon, 1/4 t nutmeg, 1/4 allspice - This is my equivalent of the recipe's 1 t of "pumpkin pie spice."
• 1 t baking powder
• 1 t baking soda
• 1 t salt
• (frosting) 4 oz cream cheese, softened
• (frosting) 1 stick butter, softened
• (frosting) 2 t vanilla
• (frosting) 4-5 C confectioners' sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Beat the eggs, brown sugar, oil, and vanilla extract in a mixing bowl until smooth. Stir in the pumpkin.
3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, spices, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture 1/2 C at a time, blending each time until smooth.
5. Drop a heaping tablespoon of batter onto an ungreased cookie sheet, using a moist finger or the back of a spoon to slightly flatten each mound. Bake the cookies for 12 minutes, then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.
6. Meanwhile, make the frosting. Beat together the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla extract in a bowl until light and fluffy. Mix in the confectioners' sugar 1/2 C at a time, until the desired consistency is reached. 4 cups of sugar resulted in a surprisingly stiff, but still spreadable, frosting.
7. To assemble the pies, turn half of the cookies bottom side up and spread a generous amount of cream cheese frosting on each one. Top them with the remaining cookies (turned right side up).

The recipe's expected yield is 10-14 complete pies. We decided to make 14 individual cookies, or 7 pies, and pour the remaining batter into two 8"x8" baking dishes to make a giant-sized pie. Fortunately, there was enough batter and frosting to make thick, fully-filled pies of both sizes. The large pie was left in the oven for three additional minutes, which was enough to cook it to completion.
The resultant Pilgrim Pies had moist, fluffy, pumpkin-y cake. The cake was much softer than the frosting, which was stiff and sugary with a faint cream cheese flavor. I would have expected the frosting to be grainier with so little cream cheese and butter to absorb the sugar, but its texture was surprisingly smooth. I preferred to eat my pies slightly chilled, so that the frosting was dense, cool, and refreshing - but, Tony's preferred 15-second microwave treatment resulted in equally-tasty warm pies dripping with gooey filling.

Here are the traditional pies:

And, here is the Macrowhoopie along with all other Bakestravaganza delights. My coworkers polished this monster off rather quickly:

What a tempting spread of autumnal desserts! Now, please excuse me as I help myself to another muffin...