Pumpkin muffins

I've seen quite a few recipes for pumpkin muffins lately.  I was hesitant to try them out.  A lot of times, the muffin recipes I find are a bit too dry.  Then this recipe caught my eye.  It was posted by Erin Cooks and entitled My Mom's Amazing Pumpkin Muffins.

The recipe looks simple and yummy.  And I had just enough pumpkin to bake it.

The result?  Sooo good.  These pumpkin muffins are amazing.  Up until now my favorite pumpkin bread has been my choice for autumn desserts and one that I never get sick of, no matter how much I eat.  After tasting these muffins, they are now my favorite autumn treat.  These tiny little morsels are super moist and just bursting with pumpkin flavor.  They are similar tasting to pumpkin bread, but in my opinion, even better.

Recipe from Erin Cooks

Yields approximately 2 dozen muffins

Ingredients

4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 can pumpkin puree (15 ounces)
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
3 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400º. Combine all of the dry ingredients in a
medium bowl.

2. Beat the eggs, sugar, pumpkin, and oil until smooth.

3. Pour
the pumpkin mixture into the dry ingredients and mix well.

4. Grease a
muffin tin or fill your tin with cupcake papers. Fill the wells with
the batter until they are 2/3 of the way full.

5. Bake for approximately 15 minutes.
Cool 5 minutes and then complete the cooling process on a wire rack.

Hue Cafe revisit

Hue Cafe
3860 Convoy St. #106
San Diego, CA 92111
858-571-7947

I paid a quick visit to Hue Cafe shortly after it opened, which can be found here. I've been wanting to give it a more thorough visit, so I went back again this weekend.  We ordered a mixed fruit shaved ice and a Belgium waffle topped with green tea gelato.

The shaved ice arrived first:

The shaved ice was so pretty.  There were a lot of toppings including peanut powder, mochi balls, canned mangoes, peaches, mandarin oranges, strawberries, kiwi, lychee jelly, and green apple flavored jelly.  And of course the vanilla bean gelato on top.  The only disappointing thing was the ice.  The ice was really hard and clumped together and we had to keep hitting it to try to break it apart. And the ice had absolutely no flavor.

Next, came our waffle:

Again, I liked the presentation. I really enjoyed the green tea gelato.  I've never had green tea flavored gelato.  All the gelato I've had has been at Italian places that feature more Italian flavors.  I would love to be able to eat green tea gelato more often.  I'm not sure where Hue got theirs from.  I found the waffle to be too sweet just like last time. 

Marbled Pumpkin Cheesecake

The other day I was laying in bed and unable to sleep and I started coming up with all these dessert ideas to put pretty twists on some popular desserts, such as a marbled pumpkin cheesecake.  I then went to allrecipes to find a good cheese cake recipe and a good pumpkin cheesecake recipe, and I was going to create my own marbled pumpkin cheesecake recipe from it.  However, while searching, I found a marbled pumpkin  cheesecake recipe.  Apparently my idea wasn't so original.  I decided to use the recipe rather than experiment with my own, though I made some changes.