Baking!!!

            The smell of pumpkin drifting throughout the house on a cool fall afternoon, and the gentle warming of the house by the oven means that baking is going on.  I have always enjoyed baking but have been baking a lot lately for different things.  I’m not one of those people that will just make the basic cake on the box, but instead look for some complicated recipe for everything.

            Recently, I was told I could bring food in on a Friday for my Chinese class.  Because I like baking, I brought in a pumpkin crisp that I got many compliments on (I will be providing the recipe at the end of this post for anyone interested).  This dessert was relatively easy and quick to make, it just requires quite a bit of baking time.  The recipe calls for nuts but to allow for some allergies I put nuts on only half, and I had some from both.  I personally liked the side without nuts better, I felt it was moister on top but the side with nuts obviously had more of a crunch, hence the name crunch.

            The pumpkin crunch recipe I used says to put whipped cream on top and I prefer it this way but I also know people that like it the other way, it really is up to whether you want to spend the money on a tub of it.  I would recommend eating all of it within a day or two.  After about three days it began to get dry; therefore I would recommend only making this for a group of people and not just to have your family eat unless they tend to eat a lot of sweets.

            I want to give some other baking hints I have learned over the years.  If you bake some cookies and they are starting to get dry, you can always just take a regular piece of bread and put it in the container with the cookies and it will moisten them back up.  I also have learned to not judge things that are in recipes and think that is going to completely ruin it; my favorite banana bread recipe has sour cream in it which makes it so moist.

            Overall, have fun baking and try new things.  Have fun in the kitchen and have fun eating! J

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