Starbucks Pumpkin Scones

Out of all the tasty treats Starbucks offers my favorites are the Pumpkin and mini vanilla scones. Good Lord, they are so freaking good. So you can imagine my excitement when I saw this pin on Pinterest for the recipe. The first time I made them they were cakey and soft. They tasted good but weren't the texture a scone should be. So I went about changing and adapting the recipe until I finally got it right. The winning adaption is this recipe. I used coconut milk because I like it, but I'm sure any milk would work. Also, I have quit cooking with butter (due to the fact it's fat content hurts my stomach) and now use coconut oil, which is easier on me. If you are a butter person then feel free to substitute butter for the coconut oil.

I used pumpkin puree that I had frozen from this past fall. When the sugar pumpkins went on sale I bought a few of them, roasted and pureed them, then froze them in 1/2 c bags. I thawed the bag in the fridge overnight and used it in the recipe.

I got impatient waiting for the sugar glaze to firm up which is why my spice glaze is hard to see. I just wanted to get one of these guys in my tummy asap.

These are so good; it's hard not to eat the whole batch in one day. If you have any left, store in airtight container

Fall Harvest Soup

Poor Mr.Surly, I haven’t made a full dinner in months. I'm not sure how much longer he can get by on my spartan dinners. I’ve been busy with hospital tests and doctor appointments and when I get home the last thing on my mind is food. All I want to do is to crawl onto the couch with my beloved heating pad and relax. Finally, all my medical appointments are winding down; my last 2 appointments are next week. By Wednesday I should know whether it’s a bad kidney or a bad pancreas that is causing my abdominal pain. Not sure at this point which option would be better. At least by knowing I can stop worrying about it and the doctors can start treating it properly. Then I can get back into cooking and baking. Sorry, about my medical rant; I'm just frustrated about it.

On a happier, seasonal note, I love the flavors of fall: pumpkin, apples, and especially acorn squash; warm, spiced comfort food. Lacking inspiration and feeling lazy, I decided to take some of my favorite fall foods and add them all together in a soup. It turned out creamy, dreamy, and delicious. Most importantly, for me, this was easy to make, yummy to eat, and caused minimal abdominal pain and bloating. Yay.

The soup is sweet from the apples and apple juice and gets a nice kick from the cayenne pepper. It is creamy enough that you don’t need to add the cream. I only added it because I need the extra fat and calories, since I'm still trying to gain weight.

Pumpkin Bourbon French Toast

Another tasty treat inspired by Mr. Bobby Flay.

For Thanksgiving I wanted to have something more than just my boring oatmeal and Mr. Surly’s fruit smoothie for breakfast. I love french toast and found myself with ½ can of pumpkin that needed used. I decided to make some pumpkin flavored french toast. It turned out to be so delicious. I cooked up the whole loaf of bread, knowing that we wouldn’t eat it all at once. It was nice to have enough breakfast for 2 days. Just pop a couple slices in the microwave or oven the next morning for a no hassle, quick breakfast.

Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cinnamon Buttercream Frosting

The following story is an illustration of how crazy all the medications I’m on are making me. The other day, while browsing the internet for food options and ideas, I came across a fall soup served in mini pumpkins. I just skimmed over the recipe (I will later regret this) thinking I would make it sometime soon. I went to the grocery store a day or two later and saw they had pumpkin pie pumpkins on sale. “Awesome,” I thought to myself, “I can get a couple of these pumpkins and make that soup this week.” Oh, how wrong I was.

A couple days after buying the pumpkins I pulled up the recipe to make the soup. Well, when I went back to the bookmarked recipe I discovered the soup was served in individual acorn squash “bowls”, not mini pumpkins. I could have sworn the first time I looked at the recipe they were in pumpkins. Also, there wasn't really a recipe, just a description of the soup. How in the world did I think that I had "skimmed" a recipe? I wanted to kick myself for relying on my (not-so-accurate) memory instead of verifying the ingredients before I went to the grocery store. I wish I could say this is the first time something like this has happened to me, but sadly it is not. You would think I’d have learned by now not to rely on my heavily medicated brain. But I guess I’m in denial about how mixed up the meds actually make me.

I then found myself stuck with two pumpkins and no idea what to do with them. So I let them sit around a bit longer to think. After mulling about it for a few days I decided to make some kind of pumpkin dessert with them. I roasted the pumpkins, scooped out the flesh, and made my own pumpkin puree. My two little pumpkins yielded about 1 ½ cups of puree. I decided to make these cupcakes because they looked yummy and were highly rated.

The cupcakes are moist and full of pumpkin flavor, but I was not a fan of the icing; I’m glad I only made half the icing recipe. I found it too sugary and I wish I had left some cupcakes un-iced. Oh well. Mr. Surly loved these, after trying one he uttered a “Holy shit, these are really good,” and went on to pop about 3 more mini cupcakes in his mouth. I bet you can guess who ate most of the batch.

Also, I apologize about the crappy job I did of icing the cupcakes; I’ve never been a good ice-er. The recipe yielded 24 mini cupcakes and 6 regular sized cupcakes. I had some bourbon and decided to add some to my cupcakes and icing for a little something extra.