Autumn is definitely here in New York. The trees in Prospect Park are changing colors, and hints of Christmas shopping are starting to show. The weather’s gotten chillier and that means it’s time to bust out pumpkin recipes.

I was getting a little tired of baking cupcakes, so I decided to find a nice pumpkin cookie to bake this time around. I scoured the Internet for recipes, and finally found one that looked delicious. And it included a glaze as well! Wonderful.

The recipe started with flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves and salt being combined in a bowl and set aside:

Next, butter and sugar were creamed together and pumpkin puree, eggs and vanilla were added once the mixture was creamy. Finally, the dry ingredients were added:

The cookies were dropped by tablespoon full onto cookie sheets and baked:

The most important thing I learned about baking pumpkin cookies is that however the batter goes down on the sheet is pretty much the form the cookie will take. I tried to flatten my cookies down so they wouldn’t be mounds of pumpkin, but some of them still turned out kind of peaked. Eh, a little glaze will take care of that. The glaze was a combination of confectioner’s sugar, milk, vanilla and melted butter, and it was delightful. It added such a pretty touch to the cookie as well as just the right amount of sweetness:

These cookies were a bit hit with my coworkers. One of them asked me if there was really pumpkin in the cookie before he would take one, claiming that he didn’t really care for pumpkin. He then took one bite and said, “Oh my God…”, then shoved the rest of the cookie in his mouth.

Stay tuned for last week’s project, Tarte Tatin Cupcakes with Caramelized Apples. As soon as I post it, I’ll be caught up! But that’s not going to happen tonight!

This is definitely a cheater post. I’ve made these Lemon Meringue Cupcakes three or four times in the course of this year, but I just love them so much. I”ve done double posts in the past, where I’ve made more than one thing in a week, so I think it all balances out. Someday I plan to make the lemon curd and just eat it over vanilla ice cream. Mmm mmm good.

The recipe begins with putting lemon juice, sugar, lemon zest and butter in the top of a double boiler and letting it simmer until the mixture is quite thick. Lemon zest is then mixed in and the mixture is covered with plastic wrap and left to chill in the fridge while the rest of the cupcakes come together.

The cupcakes are a fairly straightforward vanilla cupcake with a little lemon juice thrown in.

Once the cupcakes are cool, a small cone is cut out of each and a couple of teaspoons of lemon curd are used to fill in the cone.

Meanwhile, egg whites and cream of tartar are whipped together until foamy, and then granulated sugar is slowly added and whipped for about ten minutes, until the meringue becomes thick and fluffy.

The cupcakes were then topped with a dollop of meringue and put on a cookie sheet to bake in the oven for an additional five or six minutes to put a little color on the meringue.

Fantastic.

My co-workers really enjoyed these. And I know that I did. These are my absolute favorite thing to eat that I make. In a couple of weeks, I will be making my absolute favorite thing to make. Mmmmm…

My next post will be about the glazed Pumpkin Cookies I just made this past Thursday, and then I’ll be caught up with the blog!

This post marks just ten more baked goods to make for this year-long project. Next year I plan to start something a little different, but more on that when it develops.

Request are starting to roll into my job. Colleen wanted something with caramel, so I made Caramel Apple Cupcakes. Archives wanted something with pineapple, so I made Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes. This week, Brianne requested blueberry muffins like Crumbs bakery makes, with coffee cake topping and everything. Apparently she went to Crumbs four days in a row looking for this muffin, but they didn’t have it on any of those days, so she came to me.

I cheated a little bit this week, because I have made blueberry muffins before. I’ve even used this particular recipe before. But I haven’t made them this year, so I think it’s okay.

This recipe is a fairly straightforward muffin recipe, in which the most important thing to remember is that when combining wet and dry ingredients, to mix them just until they’re incorporated. It keeps the batter light n’ fluffy.

It’s also a good idea to coat your blueberries with just a little flour so that they don’t sink to the bottom of the batter.

The recipe instructed me to fill the muffin tins up about 3/4 of the way full, but I feel like that was too much. I know most people love that little muffin top that oozes out over the sides of the tins, but I’m not a fan. It makes the cupcakes top heavy. So all my muffins came out with a muffin top, which was covered with a flour/sugar/cinnamon/butter crumb topping.

In the end, they came out pretty nice, except for that nagging muffin top. But Brianne certainly enjoyed hers.

I’m pretty behind with updating this blog (but not behind on baking! I’m still caught up on that), so I hope to post a couple of weeks’ worth of stuff while I’m on a mini-vacation back in Ohio. The next post will be about my beloved Lemon Meringue Cupcakes.