Cranberry Nut Roll

Since buying my jelly roll pan, it hasn't had much play. I made a delightful pumpkin roll a year or two back and since then it's just been another one of my unloved toys. I decided it was time for a romp!
Found this recipe for Cranberry Nut Roll, and it sounded like the perfect addition for my Fall bakefest.
The recipe is pretty simple, and on the site it claims that it is healthy. I can buy into this, I suppose. I was surprised at the separating of the egg whites and egg yolks and then folding technique. There was actually not much flour in the roll mix itself, so I guess this makes it more of a meringue base and thus lightening it up. I also used the lower fat cream cheese in the filling, but did not budge on the real butter.
As I was reading through the recipe, I realized I did not have any wax or parchment paper to put on the pan. I have those neat silicon pan liners so decided to have a go with that. It turned out just fine, the only funny part being you could see where I've used it to bake cookies before. No one but me noticed, of course.

This turned out to be the office favorite. My Jelly Roll Pan dances in delight of the news.

Pumpkin Brownies

First thing I like about this recipe is that it tells you honestly how much effing butter is in the recipe. If you’ll recall my previous Cranberry Oatmeal Cookie recipe from the Quaker lid, it states 1/2 cup of butter, plus 6 tbsp. For those of you who might not know... 1/2 cup of butter is 8 tbsp. So seeing the “plus 6 tbsp” just kind of made me giggle.
Anyhoo, this recipe has you half the base and then you make one half chocolatey goodness and the other pumpkiny goodness. Normally I’m not a fan of nuts in my desserts, but I felt like the walnut bits in the pumpkiny half were a good addition. Plus, HEB helped the decision a little bit by selling already super chopped pieces of walnuts. (Hey, don’t judge...Mama needs a good cutting board!)
You layer one on top of the other and then take a knife to swirl it around. Pretty simple, and if it turns out anything like the batter on the spoon was (after it was retired from use, I promise!)...then these are going to be simply delightful.
These were my personal favorite from the fall baking adventure, so I'll be making mass amounts to take home with me :)

Recipe for Pumpkin Brownies on AllRecipes

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

I first tried this recipe for Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies right before I started this blog. And second time around, this recipe is definitely a keeper (printed out and put into my recipe book). The cookies turn out like muffin tops or mini cakes! Moist and just perfectly spiced with some drops of chocolate. The only thing I can say that is mine about this recipe is my VIP tool for today, Pampered Chef Medium Scoop. I don't even remember when I bought this sucker...it was either high school or college. But it makes drop cookies a cinch.

Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies

Now, if there's anything I've learned about Oatmeal cookies over the years I've been baking them is...nothing beats the recipe under the Quaker lid. Knowing I had a 2 lb bag of Craisins at home (Costco, I <3 you!), I just pulled the lid on the bin of Quaker to peek at the rest of the ingredients for the cookies. Put the Quaker bin in my basket and picked up the brown sugar.
Nothing fancy, just replaced the raisins with Craisins. I already know they will be a hit. They are delicious!

Recipe from Quaker
You'll get my butter giggle in a later post...

FYI:
Not-as-fatty Quaker Oatmeal Cookie Recipe

There's pumpkin spice everywhere...must be time for Fall!

I think if I were to survey my friends, fall would most likely be the favorite season. Back home in Tucson, fall lasts about a week. The weather is gorgeous and you temporarily forget the heat you endured for the past several months. There's no environmental/visual cues that say "hey, it's fall!" One of my favorite things to happen with it's fall though...is pumpkin spice EVERYTHING!
So here in Austin, it's been gorgeous. The weather is similar to back home, except it's not as hot during the day and when the sun goes away it is really cold. It's been going back and forth between warm weeks and brisk weeks, and I've been enjoying it. Walking around the neighborhood there are acorns of all shapes and sizes on the ground. Leaves are somewhat dropping, although it seems the trees are as confused as the weather is switching at a whim.
Fall, pumpkin spice, night = cold, all these things get me excited and leave me in anticipation for the holidays.
I figure what better way than to test out some desserts using fall ingredients. I chose to play with pumpkin and cranberry.

I'll start the first off with my flop...the Pumpkin Fudge.

Pumpkin Fudge
I haven't made fudge in years, and I have never tried or heard of Pumpkin Fudge. Finding this recipe made me want to attempt it immediately! Of course, I had to find the right day to squeeze in a bakefest, so I have already purchased the mini Wilton fall cookie cutouts in anticipation of making leaf and acorn shaped pumpkin fudge.
So I gave this a go last night. The recipe seemed easy enough. I even added some nutmeg, cloves, and ginger to the recipe to spice it up a little bit more than just the cinnamon it called for. Started cooking, and it smelled great. It seemed to reduce down to something recognizable as fudge. Put it on my cookie sheet and tried to flatten it out. Watched something on TV for 10 mins, came back to it...and it was hard as a rock! I think I used too much heat for the time it called for. It was fine as Pumpkin Brittle, I suppose. After breaking off a corner and nearly breaking my teeth, I decided to scrap the whole thing. I really should have taken a picture, but I'm sure no one wants to see the contents of my trash bin. It'd be pretty funny though.
Guess my mini Wiltons are going to be cutting acorn and leaf shaped cheese instead. mmmm.