One week and counting....

It's almost Thanksgiving!  The kiddos are counting down the days!  We went Tuesday and bought our Thanksgiving turkey.  He's a big one, weighing in at 19.33 lbs!  The kids were excited about picking it out!

Fall always puts me in a mood for pumpkin stuff.  This year I bought some pie pumpkins at Walmart for decorating.  As they sat on my table, I thought, why not see how to make pumpkin puree from them.  I googled how to do it and I gave it a try.  I have now made pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie and pumpkin cream cheese muffins from the pumpkin that I made myself!  It is not something that I would want to do every year because it is a little time consuming but it was fun learning something new!

The pumpkin cream cheese muffin recipe comes courtesy of Baked Perfection.  Click here for the recipe to these excellent muffins.

The pumpkin bread recipe is wonderful!  It is the moistest bread I have ever had and it tastes divine!  Here is the recipe:

Ingredients
1 c packed brown sugar
2 large egg whites
1 c pure pumpkin
1/4 c canola oil
1/3 c plain or vanilla yogurt
1 tsp vanilla
1 c all purpose flour
3/4 c whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Spray loaf pan and dust with flour.  In large bowl, with wire whisk, combine brown sugar and egg whites.  Add pumpkin, oil, yogurt and vanilla; stir to combine.  In medium bowl, combine flour, wheat flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, and salt.  Add flour mixture to pumpkin mixture; stir until just combined.  Do not overmix. Pour batter into pan and bake 45-50 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center of loaf comes out clean.  Cool in pan 10 minutes. Remove from pan and cool completely.