pumpkin spice baked doughnut holes

It's been awhile since I pulled out my babycakes cake pops maker, so I figured Thanksgiving would be a great time to try another recipe. We had two Thanksgiving dinners to hit, so I wanted something that featured pumpkin, but that was easy to make.

These aren't the traditional cake pops (the ones that are a mash of cake and frosting) but are more of a mix between a cake pop and a doughnut hole (since doughnuts are traditionally fried, I wasn't sure if they were real doughnut holes either). To make these baked doughnut holes, I modified a pumpkin spice muffin recipe that I love so they ended up fluffy and moist.

I know it's never a good idea to make a new recipe for a large getogether, but hey, I like living dangerously (haha, not really), but I figured that since no one knew I was bringing a dessert, if this turned into a massive fail, I could just leave the entire mess at home.

Turned out that I didn't have anything to worry about - these turned out really good. My brother-in-law, Mike, doesn't like pumpkin anything, but even he enjoyed these, since the pumpkin flavour is really subtle. I coated the first batch in cream cheese frosting, but they're just as good without frosting, if you prefer something a little less sweet.

treat petite: blueberry muffins

UPDATED: For my first "Treat Petite" challenge from Stuart (aka Cakeyboi) and Kat (aka The Baking Explorer) , I'm using one of my favourite past recipes - blueberry muffins. The theme for Treat Petite No. 1 is 'No Theme', so anything goes!  :)

I had a couple of extra days off from work last weekend so I was planning on whipping up a double-batch of banana crumb muffins (after I made them for the first time, there were a lot of complaints from family members who saw the photos and didn't get to try any so I was trying to bake enough for everyone).

While I was getting everything prepped, I noticed a HUGE bucket of fresh blueberries on the kitchen table. Apparently, my mom's friend had spent the weekend "picking-your-own" blueberries and ended up with too much, so gave us some. They were incredibly small (and juicy) and I immediately jumped on the internet to find a simple blueberry muffin recipe.

I ended up baking two batches of banana crumb muffins and one batch of these delicious blueberry muffins. The original recipe (on allrecipes.com) included a crumb topping, but I just used the same crumb topping that I use for the banana muffins.

Note: Crumb topping is always amazing if you eat the muffins on the same day as they're baked. Otherwise, they get soggy by the next day. If you aren't planning on eating these right away, I'd suggest skipping the crumb topping and just making simple blueberry muffins (Paul requested that I leave the crumb topping off one muffin for him and you can see from the photo above that it's still stunning).

Either way, these muffins are perfect for breakfast...or dessert...or a snack!  :)

banana crumb muffins

I had a real "baker" moment last weekend. I woke up and just felt the urge to BAKE something. I've never had that feeling before. The problem was I didn't really have that many ingredients handy...until noticed there were four over-ripe bananas hanging around. Eureka! I found this amazing recipe for Banana Crumb Muffins on the internet and off I went.

A couple of hours later, my house spelled wonderfully of bananas and cinnamon and I could barely wait for these babies to cool before I started nibbling. My parents were there when these came out of the oven and they could barely contain their enthusiasm (I fear my mom will be handing me over-ripe bananas by the bushel now in the hopes I will make more for her!)

The only (very minor) problem I had was the amazing crumb topping on these inevitably goes soggy by the next day...I haven't figured a way to keep them crunchy yet. Not that it mattered much as this batch was gone by the third day!