I love to experiment with cooking and baking. In this video, I walk you through today’s experiment with pumpkin and Fresh & Easy’s Ginger Bread mix.
Mentioned in this video:
Author: Carma Spence
Carma Spence has been experimenting in the kitchen since she was four years old and loves trying out new recipe ideas. She is the author of Bonkers for Bundt Cakes and Your Perfect Pie, as well as author and contributor to several more non-food-related books. With Carma's Cookery, she is taking her passion for empowering people and blending it with her passion for cooking, gift-giving and entertaining.
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Product Review: Mighty Mug
This product is so cool, I had to do a video review!
So … did you get a kick out of my sound effects? I didn’t even realize I was doing that until I started editing the video!
Want a Mighty Mug for your self? You can grab one at Amazon.com. It comes in a variety of colors, including black, blue, red, green, orange, purple and cream. The one in my video is orange.
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Abuela’s Stuffing + My Modifications
One of my favorite Thanksgiving dishes growing up was the stuffing my abuela made. I try to make it each year, but like every other recipe, I can’t leave well enough alone. This year, I felt inspired to document my little Carma-izing journey of my grandmother’s stuffing recipe and share it with you.
Ingredients:
- 1 loaf of toasted stale bread
- 1 medium or half a large onion
- 1 lb ground meat (beef, sausage or both)
- 1 container sliced fresh mushrooms
- 1 small can olives
- 2 large eggs
- Poultry seasoning (to taste)
- Milk or chicken broth
Directions:
Step One: Prepare the bread
You need one loaf of toasted stale bread to make the stuffing. Abuela usually used french bread or sourdough. This year I found a loaf of multigrain bread with flax and pumpkin seeds and decided to use that.
When I got home, I took out a cube of butter to let it soften. The mix only needs you to add three things: a softened cube of butter, a tiny bit of water and an egg.
The dough was a little sweeter than I prefer, but had a nice balance of pumpkin and spice flavors. Once reason I don’t normally use cookie mixes is because I can’t reduce the sugar and most are too sweet for me. I was afraid this might be the case upon tasting the dough.
I also did as the instructions said and stirred the ingredients together without the aid of an electric mixer. If you’ve softened the butter enough, this works just fine.
I tasted the cookies both fresh from the oven and after they were thoroughly cooled. Both were quite nice. They remind me of a cross between a snicker doodle and a molasses cookie with a hint of pumpkin. These are perfectly decent cookies. The edges are crispy and the centers are mildly soft. I love the crispy part!
The cookies are still a bit too sweet for my tastes, but they aren’t as sweet as other cookie mixes I’ve tried. The mix said, depending on the size of the cookie, it made up to 3 dozen cookies … I ended up with two baker’s dozen plus one. Once the butter was softened … I left it on the kitchen table for about an hour … preparation takes about 15-20 minutes.
If you want something different for your cookie jar this holiday season, I recommend you try out Betty Crocker’s Pumpkin Spice Cookie Mix.
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Quick Tropical Treat
I saw Silk’s coconut milk in the refrigerator section the last time I went grocery shopping and just hast to try it out. I love coconut, but have never thought of drinking the milk because it is usually too thick. What Silk has done is reduced that thickness, reduced the fattiness and made a very drinkable version that is only lightly flavored with coconut.
Today, on a lark, I decided to whip some up with frozen mango. The result was yummy!
Ingredients:
- 1 cup Silk Coconut Milk
- 2/3 cup frozen mango chunks
Directions:
- Toss in a blender and blend until smooth.
Then just be careful of brain freezes!
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A few of my favorite foods
Pesto with Spinach and Feta Cheese
I was first introduced to pesto when I was 16. I thought the name was so funny. But once I tasted it I wondered why hadn’t Mom made this before! The garlic … yum! The smoothiness of the virgin olive oil … mmmm. And just a touch of crunch from pine nuts. I’m in heaven. Then, in my 20s I decided to experiment and added some spinach and feta cheese to the mix. Ah! Perfection. The tartness of the feta mixes nicely with the bitter of the spinach and the awesomeness of the pesto. I get chills just thinking of it.
The Chorizo Potato Burrito
When I first lived in Phoenix (I’ve lived there two separate times), I lived walking distance from a little shack-like Mexican restaurant called Eriberto’s. For breakfast, the served this burrito, which also had some eggs. It was DA BOMB! It was so good, I would beg my husband to take me there so I could have one … no matter what time of day it was! Later, I’d buy chorizo and some form of potato product (hash browns, fries or even tater tots) and make my own tortilla-less version. I’ve been to many Mexican take out places since, but found none that mix those three ingredients with the panache that Eriberto’s does. I miss you!
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Cheesecake Lessons Learned
Remember that Pistachio Cheesecake I shared with you last month? Here’s what it looked like the night of the big event, all gussied up with RediWhip:
Yeah, looks like a disaster, doesn’t it.
This is what happened.
I transported an opened can of RediWhip to the party. I didn’t think that would be a problem. But, as we were getting the can out of the car, you could hear a hissing sound. I think much of the gas that helps the whipped cream appear whipped escaped … the hissing went on for a good 5 minutes … and who know how long it was doing that before we opened the trunk!
So, lesson learned: Don’t open the RediWhip before you take it to a party or you’ll get liquid cream and not whipped cream.
Oh, well. It did taste good.