I can't wait for fall!!!

And since I can't wait, I decided to make Pumpkin Bread :-) Fall is one of my favorite times of the year and I always look forward to all of the pumpkin flavored edibles. Starbucks just came out with their Pumpkin Latte and Pumpkin Frappacino and after having a couple of those in the past weeks, I decided that fall wasn't coming fast enough itself so I would try to force it in my own kitchen. This recipe was recommended to me by a friend at work and she assured me that it was easy enough to do considering I had never made ANY type of bread before. This recipe was actually pulled off of www.allrecipes.com




Downeast Maine Pumpkin Bread (www.allrecipes.com)

1 (15 oz) can pumpkin puree
4 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup water
3 cups white sugar
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour three 7x3 inch loaf pans. (Mine only made two, but I have bigger loaf pans.)

- In a large bowl, mix together pumpkin puree, eggs, oil, water and sugar until well blended. In a seperate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. Stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended. Pour into the prepared loaf pans.

- Bake for about 50 minutes in the preheated oven. Loaves are done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Class #2 of Course #2

After having a week off of class, I was ready to go back and learn new things! For this class we had to have royal icing instead of buttercream icing. Royal icing is much easier to make than buttercream and also much easier to clean up! This week we learned how to also work with color flow icing. This turns hard like candy but keeps a shiny, puffy look to it. For our flowers this week we did apple blossoms, violet leaves and violets.

Here is what it looks like with all of my stuff spread out in class:


Here are my color flow birds (mine are the ones on the top left, mom's are on the bottom right):


Here are my violet leaves, violets and apple blossoms:

Wilton Cakes Course 2

Tonight I started Course 2 of the Wilton Cake Decorating class. This time around, we only have to make one cake and not until the last class (which makes things tons easier for me) but we still have to make all of the icing. For this class we focused on learning two flowers: the rosebud and the chrysanthemum. The rosebud wasn't too bad but the mum was a real pain. By the way, the picture of the cake on the box is the cake we will be making in our final class for this course...

Here is a picture of my finished chrysanthemum: