NuJoi's Kitchen Diary: pumpkin butter

Friday, December 23, 2011

Ode to Vermont and Canada

I'm so not feeling the Christmas spirit this year. I want a shirt that says, "Bah. Humbug." However, the bright sunny morning cheered me a little and I decided to celebrate the first day of me not checking my Blackberry all day with some scones. Not just any scones -- maple-glazed pumpkin scones to be exact. I wanted to make these over Thanksgiving, but a family emergency kept me from my kitchen most of my time off.

You've seen the scone recipe before, so let's get to it. It starts pretty much the same; pulse dry ingredients in the food processor. Add cold butter.

Here's the departure: make Trader's Joe's Pumpkin Butter your friend. Y'all might even be best friends after this :-)

Mix it into the cream really well. Instead of a full cup of cream, I used 3/4 C. Add the cream to the flour mixture.

CI has you do this by hand, I just added mine to Miracle and pulsed until it formed a dough.

Now comes the messy part. Dump the dough on the counter. Knead very gently to incorporate all the dry bits. Form a ball or two, depending on how you will shape your scones.

I made two balls because I used a 6" cake pan so I could have mini scones.

Press the dough into the pan.

Invert.

Slice (do a better job than I did.) Remember to press straight down. I'll show you what happens later when you don't.

I did better on the second round.

I started with refrigerated instead of my usual frozen butter, so I parked these in the refrigerator while I took a bacon detour.

I did say MAPLE pumpkin scones. No way I was going to have a hot oven, maple syrup on the counter and bacon in the refrigerator without making maple-glazed bacon again.

Back to the scones. I heated some butter and maple syrup together.

I gave the scones a beautiful brush-on tan and to the oven they went.

Here's what I got.

Absolutely delicious! The texture was closer to a biscuit or even cake. I prefer my scones on the drier side, but the flavor made up for the break with tradition. The pumpkin butter was pretty sweet, so I would knock out some of the sugar when I try these again. The maple syrup kept the outside of the scones from getting hard, so next time, I'll make half with the glaze on before baking and put the glaze on the other half after baking to see which I like best.

With Teavana's English Breakfast Tea, these made a wonderful morning treat. On a side note, here's another vote for Silpat -- the burnt syrup just flakes off. Easy cleanup.

Remember my note to press straight down when cutting? Here's what happens when you don't. He's all crooked :-( I'm working on a granite counter, so I use my bench scraper to cut dough. Moving to a cutting board so I can use my knives is too much work. And even still, I think it's just the way I cut and lack of wrist strength. I sometimes have lopsided biscuits too.

Tools of the trade

Monday, January 28, 2008

A Winter High

I love my Maryann cake pan. It is a foolproof way to make an elegant cake. There's a depression in the top of the pan that you can fill with ganache, lemon curd, pastry cream, whipped cream, caramel or whatever your heart desires. I use this pan for a great pumpkin cake. This time, I upped the ante by letting sweet potato take the lead. Add caramel and watch out!

The base for this recipe is Gourmet Magazine's caramel cake, which was also featured on Smitten Kitchen. I used AP flour, completely by accident. The next modification was sweet potato. (You can't have a sweet potato cake without sweet potato.)

Next up? Pumpkin butter. This, along with butternut squash, is the joy of fall (and winter if you stock up at Trader Joe's). Add both the sweet potato and pumpkin butter after you've creamed the flour and sugar and before you add the flour.

Spray the pan with Baker's Joy or any other spray with flour. Make sure the batter is evenly distributed in the pan and you'll have a pretty cake!

After the cake has cooled, get to work on your caramel. The recipe called for heavy cream, brown sugar and corn syrup. Unless you are an expert caramel maker, don't skip the corn syrup!

Hindsight being 20/20, I should have let the caramel cook longer, but I thought I followed the recipe correctly. This thinner caramel isn't the traditional caramel in caramel cakes I'm used to, but it worked for the Maryann cake. (I'm still on a quest for the perfect caramel cake recipe. Here in Chicago, people talk about boiling a can of sweetened condensed milk in the can on the stove or baking a can of sweet milk in a water bath.)

Spoon the caramel down the sides of the cake and spread it over the center.

While you allow that to cool, get started on the whipped cream. I think I used a cup of heavy cream. Sweeten powdered sugar and use bourbon for flavoring. After the cream is whipped, scoop some sacrificial cream into a separate bowl. Add a generous amount of pumpkin butter.
Stir and blend well. Now, fold the plain whipped cream into the pumpkin butter whipped cream. I'm sure you should probably stabilize the whipped cream. I'm just too lazy.