Well, one more week til Halloween, so I thought I'd share a few tried and true Sweet-Tooth recipes featuring Pumpkin. The first recipe was given to me over 25 years ago by my friend Rachel. It is scrumptious, and as she noted on her original recipe card, it contains 100% of vitamin A and 10% of iron per serving! My children used to love this with whipped cream straight from the oven!
Pumpkin Gingerbread
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 13" X 9" pan. Place the following ingredients in a large bowl...
3 1/2 cups Flour 2 cups Sugar
1 cup soft Butter 1/2 cup Molasses
1/3 cup Water 4 Eggs, lightly beaten
2 cups Pumpkin Puree 2 teaspoons Baking Soda
1 teaspoon Salt 1 teaspoon Cinnamon
1 teaspoon Ginger 1/2 teaspoon Baking Powder
1/2 teaspoon Cloves 1 teaspoon Vanilla
Beat well and pour into prepared pan. Bake for about an hour or until toothpick in center comes out clean. Serve with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream, and enjoy!
(I think I'll head to the kitchen and make a pan of this when I'm done here!)
I always laugh at all the jokes regarding Fruit Cake, but I love the stuff! I never met a Fruit Cake I didn't like, and this one is delicious!
Pumpkin Fruit Cake
Preheat oven to 275 degrees. In a large bowl, combine
1 cup soft Butter 2 Eggs
1 cup Pumpkin Puree 1 cup Sugar
2 cups Flour 1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda
1 teaspoon Cream of Tartar 1 teaspoon Vanilla
Mix batter together til well-combined. Then add
2 cups dried, chopped mixed fruits... whatever you like.
(This can be an assortment of any combination of dried fruits or the pre-packaged typical fruitcake citron mixture that's available at your grocer's)
1/2 cup Golden Raisins
1 cup chopped nuts (pecans, walnuts or whatever you like)
Pour into either one large loaf pan (bake this for 1 1/2 hours) or smaller mini-loaf pans. (Bake these for 50-60 minutes) til a toothpick comes out clean.
When cooled, brush about 1/2 cup of rum or flavored brandy over the loaves, if desired. Wrap in plastic wrap and let set for a week or two in the refrigerator.
Pumpkin Roll Cake
(A must-have for Sunday dinner dessert or Thanksgiving around here!)
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Spray a jellyroll pan or large cookie sheet and dust with flour. Dust a clean dishtowel with 1 tablespoon Confectioner's Sugar, set aside.
In a large bowl, combine the following ingredients...
3 Eggs 1 cup Sugar
3/4 cup Flour 2/3 cup Pumpkin puree
1 tablespoon Cinnamon 2 teaspoons Ginger
1 teaspoon Nutmeg 1 teaspoon Vanilla
1/2 teaspoon Cloves 1 Tablespoon Orange Juice
Beat thoroughly and pour batter into prepared pan. Bake 15 minutes. Remove from oven and cool for 5 minutes; carefully invert onto dishtowel. Sprinkle cake with 1 tablespoon Confectioner's Sugar, roll up with towel and let cool completely. Meantime, prepare icing by creaming together
1 cup Confectioner's Sugar
8 oz. Cream Cheese
1 teaspoon Vanilla
Unroll cooled cake, frost with Icing and re-roll without towel! Sprinkle with Confectioner's Sugar.
Well, that will do for now lest we have a sugar-overload. Hope all is well with you and yours as November nears. I've been trying to catch up on things, and am pleased to say I finally got around to picking the Concord Grapes. I made two batches of jelly. I got the barn cleaned for winter... and just in time. My friend Martha called me the other day and needed a home for 5 laying hens... two were just old biddies past their prime, but what's two more mouths to feed? They're sweet little things, and followed my grandson and I about the barnyard and didn't mind being petted and carried. My daughter and my mom have given me a hand peeling off wallpaper from two bedrooms upstairs. I suppose I'll have to rent the floor sander again and re-do the floors in the upstairs hallway and three adjoining bedrooms. And we've been trying to find time to get my workshop together. And I need to get the tractor out and get the frost-blackened gardens tidied up and cleaned out in preparation for winter snows. And so on! I must go bake some Pumpkin Gingerbread now, so til next time! xox ~Laura of Wildenblue Farm
PS: My daughter wanted Pumpkin Roll instead!
~Harvest blessings to all from Laura of Wildenblue Farm!~
As anyone who lives in the North Country knows, the potential for a killing frost for the gardens becomes more likely as the days tick away towards mid-September. The plants still continue their somewhat-slowed growth, seemingly unaware of what lies just ahead. The cucumbers, Kentucky Wonder pole beans, Yin Yang bush beans, and Butternut Squash stretch their tendrily fingers, bedecked with blossom rings, ever-forward toward fences and arbors, reaching to claim more of the space they occupy in the garden. 
Pumpkins are taking advantage by day of what little is left of the warmth and sunshine, still sending out blossoms of gold despite evening temperatures dipping into the mid-forties and below. Other crops are submitting to the beginning of Autumn; the Spaghetti Squash, Garlic and Potato vines have withered and dried, offering their fruits as sacrifice and testimony of the time passed.
A smattering of blushing leaves have released themselves from the grasp of the red maple branches and pinned themselves to the mossy-green cloak of lawn... they beckon the others still on the trees to let go and follow along, for they know that cold winds are not far away, waiting to dislodge them all with one frosty breath.
Catnip and especially Basil are waiting to be harvested before frost blackens their leaves and takes away any will to survive. The Catnip has been nestled in a blanket of row-cover all season long, which offers protection from our seven marauding cats. Yet it will offer little protection from a heavy frost. Thus, this becomes a chore of necessity which must be tended to within the next few days.
When mom and I built the little greenhouse last October, she commented on how the cattle panels we were using in its construction would make ideal arbors for beans and gourds to climb on. Needless to say, when the garden went in this spring, so did the cattle panels. At about $20.00 per 16' X 4' panel, it proved to be a fairly inexpensive and very sturdy trellis for peas, pole beans, gourds, cucumbers and morning glories to meander up and over. They were easy to bend in half, and I secured them in the ground by driving a steel fencepost in the center of each side and using plastic cable ties to secure the panel to the posts. They stand easily 7' tall, and I kept them about 4' apart width-wise. 
I would definitely recommend them for this purpose, and will absolutely use them again next year. They withstood the weight of birdhouse gourds which I planted on one side of a trellis. On the other side, I planted scads of Kentucky Wonder pole beans. The cattle panels didn't move in the winds, nor did they buckle or cave under the weight of the crops leaning on them. Out in the back garden entryway, I covered one arch with Hop's Vine and Morning Glories... both of which grew heavily and thickly to completely engulf the cattle panel. I can still grasp the top of the arch and hang my weight from it and it does not bend. I'm very pleased with mom's idea!
I am continuing to dig potatoes and garlic, and will soon need to start digging up some Jerusalem Artichokes. When it began raining this afternoon, I headed out to transplant over 100 autumn Forget-Me-Not plants and seedlings which had taken over a good chunk of the berry garden. I have some lovely fall Raspberries that are sending out still more side shoots, and because the berries are so large and prolific, I will transplant the 
new shoots to a brand-new bed to get a good start for next year. So the rampant blue seedlings must go elsewhere. I'm appreciative of the gentle rain we've received this evening, and won't mind if it continues all night, for the sake of the transplanted flowers and a few fruit trees my brother brought up that I finally got around to planting the other day! 
Tomorrow afternoon, there will be a Baby Shower here for Nicole, my middle son Jake's girlfriend. Sunday, we have plans to meader about the countryside in New York and Vermont for a Cheese Tour of Washington County. I'll bring my camera!
