Life Marches On

So we survived Hurricane Igor with not even a power loss. It seemed like ours was one of the few streets that didn't have the power go out - most people lost it for at least a day! I feel pretty lucky.
Life continues to move on, with me staying at home and Paul going off to the school every day - he's trying to get all his schoolwork done on a 9-5 basis so that he can be home on evenings and weekends without worrying about papers and readings. We call it "work" to G, just so it's less confusing.

I am trying to be more organized with staying at home. It's so easy just to let the days get away from you and then the whole day is gone. One of my goals is to bake at least once or twice a week.

This week was one of my favourite Autumn recipes - Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins. I love the ones at Starbucks, but since the closest Starbucks is a good half hour walk and the muffins are expensive, I try to make my own. They're pretty similar.




Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins


1 package of Cream Cheese
3 cups flour
2 cups sugar (I reduced this a bit to 1 1/2)
3 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp cloves
1 1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 cups canned pumpkin
1 1/4 cups vegetable oil
4 eggs

Oven: 350
Paper or grease 12 muffin cups (this recipe claims to make 24, but that must be small ones, cause I barely got 12 - I like big overflowy muffins, I think)

Stir together dry ingredients. Beat eggs and stir in pumpkin and oil. Stir into dry ingredients just till combined - cause they're muffins and you always do that with muffins.

For the cream cheese: You can either roll it into a big log and put it in the freezer, or you can just do it the lazy way like me and just take it straight out of the package .
Put a small spoonful of batter into each muffin cup, add a little chunk of cream cheese (like... half a tsp), then put more batter on top of that. Make another chunk of cream cheese (maybe a little bigger) and press it into the top of each muffin. This way you have cream cheese all the way to the bottom of the muffin, which is the best thing ever.
Bake for 20-25 min, or until a toothpick comes out clean, blah blah blah, just don't burn them.

My dream is to be able to put the candied pumpkin seeds on top like they do at Starbucks, but I haven't found them/haven't had the energy to make them.



G gives it her seal of approval.