Frankenstein Computer

So it really might have looked like I missed a day, but I swear that I didin't, I sat up here last night, and wrote a fantastic post about the lovely pumpkin pie I made.. from scratch, and the delicious cupcakes I made for a friends birthday yesterday. I hit publish, turned off my computer, and went to bed. Tonight, as I come back to write today post, I don't see yesterday's post at all, not even in my saved drafts. WHAT!! So now I feel like I've failed already, but it wasn't my fault it was this stinkin frankenstien computer we have. Nothing works completely right, and I don't understand why. Especially when this program is on the internet, not on my computer and really all I do is type words into it, and upload pictures. It shouldn't be brain surgery, but for some reason, I have so much trouble with it. Why does it hate me so!!!

Anyway so I'm going to rewrite what I wrote yesterday on my fabulous pumpkin pie, and deletable cupcakes.

So since we had so many pumpkins this year, and we didn't need to carve all of them, I decided to try my hand at making a real pumpkin pie, with real pumpkin puree, not from a can. So the pumpkin Nana gave us, was a pie pumpkin, and I thought just the right size. I did some recipe searches on Google, and decided on this one http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/suzannes_old_fashioned_pumpkin_pie/

Rawrrr, the hyperlink overwrite isn't working.. add it to the list!!

Anyway so after deciding on the recipe, I enlisted some help from Maile, and we cut open the pumpkin and got to work cleaning it out. Luckily Maile is really into scooping out the guts this year, I hope this doesn't change :). So we made quick work of getting them ready, then we popped them into the oven, for about and hr 10 min. Once we could poke a fork in them, we pulled them out and let them cool for about 30 min. Then scraped the insides clean, like you would a butternut squash or acorn squash. It came out really easily, and made about double what I needed for the recipe. After that it was just a matter of following the recipe for your standard pie (canned or not) I was really worried about the texture being a bit stringy, but after it was mixed and baked, it was perfect. It turned out really fantastic, and we surprised Mikael when he got home. He loves pumpkin pie. I felt so accomplished, and very chef like :). For really not that much more work. I'll definately do it again, and utilize all these pumpkins we are growing :).

Then Monday night, I volunteered to make cupcakes for my co-worker/friends birthday which was on Tuesday. I did some more searching and found this one on Food Networks site, it was on Cupcake Wars, so I knew it had to be yummy. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/cinnamon-sugar-graham-cupcakes-recipe/index.html. It was a bit labor intensive.. quite a bit more steps then your average cupcake recipe, but so worth it if you have the time. It was delicious, maybe because there's like a lb of butter in the whole recipe, or maybe just because I put a lot of love into it. Yeah i'll go with that last part :). My only suggestion is to be careful not to overbake, they dry out quickly. One batch turned out perfectly moist, and the next batch was just a tad dry for my taste, and there really wasn't much of a difference in time, except maybe because the pan was still hot from the first batch coming out. I wish I would have taken pictures though, but it escaped me. I'll try and remember next time, I found another cupcake recipe to make with my leftover pumpkin puree.. They look quite tasty too!! I'll let you know.