Urban Suburban Mommy

Tag Archives: pumpkin

Outrageous Pumpkin Spice Bar + Butterscotch + Salted Pretzel

Posted on by Posted in Urban Suburban Mommy .

With pumpkin season in full swing, this treat is the perfect way to put those pumpkins on a plate. Executive Chef Adrianne Calvo has created the perfect dessert for the season – all treat and no trick! Once you take a look, you’ll be shocked at how easy this one is! 

What you need:

Crust:

– 2 cups graham cracker, ground
– 1/2 cup sugar
– 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
– 1/8 teaspoon kosher salt
– 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted

Filling:

– 2 cups canned pumpkin
– 1 cup cream cheese, softened
– 1/2 cup cool whip topping
– 1/2 cup condensed milk
– 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
– 1 teaspoon pumpkin spice

Topping:

– 1/2 cup cream cheese, softened
– 2 cups cool whip topping
– 1/2 cup powder sugar
– 1 cup butterscotch chips
– 1/2 cup salted pretzels, chopped

What you do:

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Crust:

Mix all the ingredients for the crust in a bowl to combine well.

Grease an 8×8 baking dish and press the crust ingredients onto the bottom of the baking dish. Bake for 5 minutes and then allow to cool.

Filling:

In a blender, whip all the filling ingredients together and pour onto crust. Freeze for 2 hours to set.

Topping:

In another blender, whip cream cheese, cool whip, and powdered sugar.

Finishing up:

Spread topping onto the top of set pumpkin. Sprinkle with butterscotch chips and pretzel. Refrigerate for 2 hours. Enjoy!

Adrianne Calvo is the Executive Chef and owner of Chef Adrianne’s Vineyard Restaurant and Wine Bar, Host of Maximum Flavor Live on NBC’s 6 in the Mix, author of four cookbooks: Maximum Flavor (2005); Chef Adrianne: Driven by Flavor Fueled by Fire (2008); #MaximumFlavorSocial (2014); and Play with Fire (2015), and founder of the Make it Count Foundation. Chef Adrianne’s Vineyard Restaurant and Wine Bar opened in 2007 and offers a varied and rotating menu with something for everyone. Monthly, the restaurant holds its signature event, Dark Dining, where guests are blindfolded for a sensual experience eliminating one sense in order to enhance another, providing maximum flavor.

www.chefadriannes.com 

Chef Adrianne

 

Chef Adrianne Calvo

Pumpkin soup

Posted on by Posted in Delicious Dishes .

I’m just going to say it: I HATE pumpkin spice anything.

Hate it.

I don’t know what the attraction is. But I don’t hold it against you. I get it. From Canadian Thanksgiving to American Thanksgiving, pumpkin spice is bound to be an obsession for many of my favourite people.

Whether it’s pumpkin pie, pumpkin spice latte or pumpkin cheesecake, I just cringe while y’all indulge. I’ll even treat you to one at Starbucks – but just leave me to my decaf soy latte and we’ll all get along.

However I’ve got a lot of pumpkin decorations for Halloween that need to be used up and I’ve got my one pumpkin indulgence that I won’t give up. Pumpkin soup. I crave it on the same level and make it until my family begs me to stop. Honestly, you can use any squash to make this, but I do love pumpkin – plus I’m totally addicted to sea-salted roasted pumpkin seeds, so nothing goes to waste!

This soup is SO easy it’s ridiculous. It’s rich and hearty, and perfect as a starter or a meal. It’s the best warm-up on a cool day and makes me sad pumpkins aren’t available all year long.

What you need:

– 2 to 3 tablespoons of butter
– 1 apple, pealed and cored (Mac, Royal Gala or Empire – preferable something soft and sweet)
– 1 medium pumpkin, skinned, cleaned out and cubed/chunked
– 2 to 3 pinches sea salt
– pepper to taste
– 2 to 3 tablespoons brown sugar
– 1 heaping tbsp curry powder
– 1 bay leaf
– 4 cups water or broth (veggie or chicken)
– 1/2 cup heavy cream, optional

Garnish: Dollop of plain Greek yogurt or sour cream,
Serve with crusty bread or crispy crackers like Paris Toasts

What you do:

In a big soup pot, melt the butter. Toss in the pumpkin and let it sauté a bit. Add apples, pumpkin, salt, pepper, brown sugar, spices and stir together. Add water (or broth) enough to cover the whole mixture.

Simmer the mixture, stirring occasionally. When the pumpkin gets really soft, grab a stick blender (I love my Braun stick blender) and blend it all right in the pot. If you don’t have a stick blender you can use a hand blender, food process or or regular blender, but the beauty of this is that it can be done in one pot without getting other gadgets dirty – plus you need to be extra careful putting hot soup into a blender or food processor. (Yes, I’ve burned myself before.) You can always let the mixture cool and puree it before reheating for serving. But seriously, how do you live without a stick blender? I LOVE mine!

Anyways, get it all blended and let it simmer further. Adjust the seasoning to taste. I like it extra curried, so I add a bit more. I don’t usually add cream, simply because I don’t often have it on hand, but now’s the time to add it. It makes the whole thing extra rich and so yum!

To serve, pour in a bowl and serve with crusty bread or Paris Toast crackers for dipping plus a big scoop of sour cream or Greek yogurt in the middle. The hot/cold thing is sensational and it’s just such a burst of flavour.

See? Who needs a pumpkin spice latte when you’ve got soup!

What to do with all that pumpkin (spoiler alert – vegan pumpkin balls)

Posted on by Posted in Delicious Dishes .

On Halloween night the pumpkins were ablaze – from traditional Jack-O-Lanterns to creative stencils and magical patterns – oh, and the big pumpkin throwing up all the pumpkin guts – that seemed to be a popular one this year in my hood.

But the day after Halloween, they’re just hollowed out squash destined for the garbage, the decorative pumpkins sitting around go unused, and leftover pumpkins at the market are on deep discount.

So what to do with all that pumpkin? If you’ve still got some good ones around, there are loads of pumpkin treats. I make pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin soup and pumpkin cookies. But fellow mom, photographer and creative cook extraordinaire, Nicole had these amazing pumpkin treats posted on Facebook, and as my mouth watered, I knew I needed to share that recipe with you all!

Nicole says: With the holidays coming up – that means holiday parties, potlucks and general excuses for food and merriment. I don’t know about you – but I always seem to have at least one person in a crowd who is worried about food considerations, and try as I might, accommodating them doesn’t always happen. However after a recent

Pinterest scroll, I lucked out! London Brazil over at Gluten Free with LB saved my balls (pun intended) so to speak. And as per my usual I added my own twist to her recipe.

pumpkin-balls

I needed sweets for two different events, one of which was going to include a vegan, with a known sweet tooth and a love of things pumpkin. So I did what all fellow sweet tooths who also love chocolate do – I found some GF vegan dark chocolate made by Good Life, melted it and covered those pumpkin balls! After the chocolate set just a bit I sprinkled some coconut sugar on top to give myself a way of setting them aside for said Vegan. I didn’t buy enough to do the entire batch, so I used regular chocolate almond bark to cover the rest.

pumpkin-balls-in-boxes

Both were met with rave reviews.

Also included in the pictures are margarita balls, that I scored from Katie over at Butterlust. (for the non-adult drinking age types I did make a non-alcoholic version that I did not put a tiny piece of lime zest on so as to not confuse the two 😉 )

These easy Halloween party treats will make you look like a star!

Posted on by Posted in Delicious Dishes .

Do you want to make something special for the class party or the Halloween bake sale? Is your child having friends over and you’re not up to a long night of baking and decorating?

#Solution: Why not do some super-easy toxic waste or some Frankensteins or pumpkins!

No, I’m not going to go all Pinteresty on you – well, maybe just a little, but I’m going to call this “Pinterest for the time deprived” because I’ve dug up some very very simple Halloween treats that will make you look like a star – with very little time spent.

It all starts with a rice crispy treat. How easy is that? We’ve all wowed our kids with cooking this one up – it’s the classic three-ingredient treat that takes all of 10 minutes to prepare. And then a few more minutes to decorate. But EASY decorate. Not up-all-night-trying-to-create-intricate-details decorate.

Rice Crispy Treats:

What you need:

– 1/4 cup butter
– 4 cups marshmallows
– 5 cups Rice Krispie Cereal (name brand or generic)

What you do:

In a large pot on medium heat melt the butter. Add the marshmallows and start stirring until they all melt. When they’re gooey and melted add the cereal, remove from heat and keep stirring.

This stuff will be pretty hot at the start but cools fairly quickly and is easy to form into balls or pour into a large greased baking pan to cool.

They’re a great base for a whole lot of treat ideas – it’s all in the decoration with these:

1. Ghosts: icing, chocolate chips

Take the cooling crispy concoction and form it into lumps. Tall lumps, fat lumps – this one isn’t fussy. Using an icing tube, pipe on two big blob dots for eyeballs and then pipe in little black pupils or use mini chocolate chips for the pupils, it works too. (You can do the easy thing and buy one black and one white tube of icing or you can mix up a quick batch of one cup icing: 2 cups powdered sugar plus 1/4 cup butter, 1 tbsp milk beaten till firm, add food colouring to achieve colour.)

The mini chocolate chip makes this even easier. All about the easy!

2. Frankenstein: food colouring, icing, chocolate chips

You’re going to add some green food colouring at the melting marshmallow/adding rice cereal phase. When the gooey mess is all blended and the colour is of your liking, pour into a greased baking pan to let cool. Cut into rectangles – these can be large or small to accommodate the number you’d like to serve.

With icing, pipe on Frankie’s hair at the top, the eyeballs – same as the ghosts – and a stitched mouth: one horizontal line and then 4 or 5 randomly spaced short vertical lines. The less tidy, the better the effect.

3. Pumpkins: food colouring, chocolate nubs or pretzel pieces, icing

Add orange food colouring at the marshmallow/adding rice cereal phase. When the gooey mess is all blended and the colour of your liking, form them into balls. Chunky balls, not perfectly round – flatten them a bit. You can press the vertical ridges in with your fingers or with a toothpick pressed long-ways against your ball, vertically – though it’s not necessary. Leave them a little lumpy, it will look fine. Finish these by creating the stem on top. A chunky piece of broken pretzel works well, or if you prefer, you can break pieces off of a chocolate bar to create little nub-sized chunks and press them into place.

For those who want to take this a bit further (you over-achievers, you!), you can pipe on some black icing triangle eyes and mouth for a Jack-o-lantern effect.

4. Confetti: sprinkles, melted chocolate, food colouring, Halloween sprinkles, ghoulishly cute straws

This one’s the simplest and ends up looking super cute. You can colour the crispies – or not. You can form them into fun shapes or balls or just cool them in a pan and cut into rectangles – the shapes get popped on the end of a stick/straw. You can partially or fully dip the treats into the melted chocolate – white chocolate shows the colours better but regular chocolate is fine too. Gently shake off the excess chocolate and lay treats on a cookie sheet lined with foil, parchment or cling wrap, covered in sprinkles. Add another layer of sprinkles and turn, coating all sides. You can also dip into a container of sprinkles, though this can get messier. You can do a light coating of sprinkles or go for full saturation. This one is fun to play with and nothing has to be uniform.

Go with the orange, white and black sprinkle mix, or go fancy with bone sprinkles or skull sprinkles or even spider sprinkles if you dare. There are a lot of options out there – some are easier to find than others.

4. Coloured treats: food colouring

I’m saving the easiest for last. Simple coloured treats. Make mock candy corn triangles with yellow and orange. Colour them green and call them Toxic Waste. Colour them orange and call them Pumpkin Bombs. Colour them black and call them Coffin Crispies. I always title the creations I send to school, it’s become half the fun of baking for those sales and parties!

Happy Halloween! Don’t eat too much of the kids’ candy.

LOL – who am I kidding? Go to town on that candy, you’ve more than earned it in the last 365 days!