Happy Halloween!

We pretty much, with very little exception, carve pumpkins every year. I like to recruit as many willing participants as possible to join in on the mess making, and this year some friends were kind enough to let us carve pumpkins at their place!
Mine (sunglasses & mustache pumpkin) is on the far left, next is Nate's scary face pumpkin, then Adam's vampire pumpkin & Erin's super happy pumpkin!

We don't live in a "neighborhood" environment and don't think we've had a trick or treater in the past 5 years, so this evening of carving pumpkins and watching Bravo's Top 100 Scary Movie Moments special on Saturday turned out to be our big Halloween happenings this year.

Here's my "seeds" recipe- although we ate them too fast for me to get a pic!
De-gut seeds as well as possible, then place in a large bowl and wash remaining guts off by swishing around and "kneading" seeds in the water, drain & repeat until seeds are all clean.
Then I pour them out onto a paper towel covered platter to dry a bit, pat dry on top with another paper towel.
Let sit for about an hour, then spread evenly over a wax covered cookie sheet and let dry overnight. Separate any that stick together and spread foil over a cookie sheet, grease lightly w/ non-stick spray & spread seeds over in an even layer.
Spray with Misto olive oil sprayer, sprinkle with kosher salt, cayenne pepper and a little chili powder.
Bake at 300 for 10-15 minutes, then turn- spray other side and bake an additional 10 minutes. My oven is insane so I really had to keep an eye on these because it changes temp at it's own will and these do go from perfectly roasted to burn-city quick in that situation :)

Wishing everyone had a safe and fun Halloween!

Puff Pastry Cheese Cake Cups w/ Pear Topping

These were a baking experiment gone RIGHT. I wanted to create a fun fall desert with stuff I had on hand. I couldn't find any recipes online combining cheesecake, puff pastry and pears...so I improvised this one, Nate is not super fond of graham cracker crusts & cheesecake, which I totally love, so I was excited to see if this worked because I had a feeling he would really dig it! Thankfully, they turned our awesome and would be great with any fruit topping, or a fabulous desert for parties!



Beth's Puff Pastry Cheese Cake Cups w/ Pear topping

1 sheet puff pastry, thawed according to package directions
2 8 oz packages cream cheese, softened and at room temperature (very important!)
3/4 c sugar
2 large eggs at room temperature
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp lemon zest
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp all spice

Topping
2 pears peeled, cored & chopped up into small pieces
1 T white sugar
1 1/2 T Brown Sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
*optional caramel for topping

Spread thawed puff pastry over floured surface and roll out. Grease a muffin pan (I used a 12 muffin-pan). Cut the pastry into 12 even squares (you could probably get 18 squares out of it if you rolled it out more. Place one square in each muffin cup.
Preheat oven to 350.

Place all toppings ingredients into a foil packet and cook in the toaster oven at 350 for 25-35 minutes.

In a large bowl combine cream cheese & sugar and mix well, until smooth and fluffy. Add vanilla and mix well, then add eggs one at a time, mixing after each. Make sure the batter is smooth and not lumpy. Use a large spoon to fill each muffin cup with cheese cake batter.
Bake cheese cake cups for about 17 minutes, then turn off oven and let stand in oven for 7 minutes. Then let cool in the pan for 15-20 minutes until removing from pan to cool. Refrigerate at least 1 hour, serve topped with pears and caramel.

Zucchini Snack

I saw these recently on Janet is Hungry one of my favorite blogs. She makes so many yummy things that I want to try! I had pretty much all the ingredients for these BAKED ZUCCHINI COINS and thought it would make a perfect football watching snack!



These were so easy and delicious I'll definitely make them again!!

Cranberry Apple Crisp

I am a total sucker for the magazines they put at the grocery store check out. Especially at this time of year, and especially the magazines with amazing deserts on the cover. This desert is not the cover feature, which I am hoping to try before the month is over, but a little bitty recipe from the "Harvest Menu" article in October 2007's Country Living Magazine.




It was really how SIMPLE this recipe is that made me excited to try it. I followed it almost exactly, and it was so gooood! I think other than pumpkin, cranberries are my favorite thing to bake with at this time of year, and this was perfectly tart and sweet. It would make an excellent Thanksgiving desert. We had it while it was still warm with some vanilla bean ice cream.

Cranberry Apple Crisp
Source: Country Living Magazine, October 2007
4 large green apples, peeled, cored, and sliced 1/2 inch
1 C. fresh cranberries
3/4 C. brown sugar
1/2 C. flour
1/2 C. rolled oats
3/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
3/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/3 cup softened butter

My changes:
I used 2 golden delicious and 2 gala because they're sweet to balance the cranberry & cubed them.

Heat oven to 375 & lightly grease an 8 x 8 baking pan with butter. Add apples and cranberries to pan. Combine sugar, flour, oats, cinnamon, nutmeg & softened butter in a bowl & mix well. Spread the oat mixture over the fruit with a spoon until covered, and bake until golden brown about 30 minutes.
Makes 6 servings

Cornbread Muffins

On Sunday we kept it very relaxed and I made my CHILI in the crock pot. I've been searching for an awesome homemade cornbread (or corn muffin in this case) recipe for a while and decided to try THIS ONE from PEABODY'S BLOG, pretty much one of my ALL time favorite blogs in the world & they were FANTASTIC. Please use the link for recipe info.




I'll be sticking with this as a great go-to cornbread recipe, I had to add the honey too, it looked to good to resist!

Beer Bread

I have not quite yet become brave enough to whip up some badass bread like some of my fellow bloggers, but fortunately I found this perfect "training wheels" recipe. I did buy some yeast and other bread making goodies, so stay tuned for Beth Baking Bread...coming soon (most likely when I have a long weekend circa Thanksgiving)
As I am sure you've noticed I LIKE BEER, and incorporate it in anything and everything when ever possible, another reason this recipe was screamin' my name.



Beer Bread
3 C. Flour
1 T. Baking Powder
1/4 C. Sugar
1 bottle of beer (I used Pumpkin ale)
2 T. ground flax seed

Combine ingredients, pour into greased loaf pan & bake at 350 for 50 minutes.
Next time I'll make this with regular non-pumpkin beer and add some roasted garlic and some fresh herbs.

The Beverly Hills Hotel...

I have been severely neglecting my blog, and my kitchen lately!! Mostly because I was working on assisting with a big charity event/ gala at The Beverly Hills Hotel. It was tons of fun and I managed to snag a pic of the killer ice sculpture martini bar and my dinner which was a perfectly cooked fillet Mignon, which was delicious! Anyhow, more updates to come (with actual food I made).