Blog Surfing

Tasty Kitchen has more great recipes this week.  Fresh Apple Bread, Crisp Toffee Bars, Harvest Apple Cookies with Brown Butter Glaze, Rustic Carrot Coffee Cake

From Hoosier Homemade made Caramel Apple Nut Bars that are delicious and super fast and easy.

Five of the Best Recipe Search Tools and they are free can be found here at Life Hacker.

Kittencal's Caramel Apples recipe will be a great recipe to use if you want to make them from scratch instead of using melted caramels. From Food.com.

Serious Eats has a recipe for Spicy Pumpkin Seed-Pecan Brittle. It gets its spice from cinnamon and cayenne pepper. You should have a candy thermometer to make this. You can find the recipe here.

A 'Lil Country Sugar has secret recipe she is sharing for her favorite Pumpkin Cookies. She also shares her whoopie pie filling recipe.

This Crunchy Pumpkin Granola from Rosey Rebecca looks great. I have been looking for a new granola recipe for fall and I think this may be it!

If you are interested in a Free On-line Budgeting Tool to help you keep track of your hard earned dollars, you should check out this site. Number one, it is free and two, it is safe, three, it has great reviews from Money Magazine. It could help your reach your financial goals. Thanks to Balancing Beauty and Bedlam.

From Judy's Kitchen, these Overnight Oatmeal Muffins look amazing. For those that can't get enough of salted caramel, here is a recipe for Salted Caramel Apple Dumplings.

The editor in chief of Taste of Home is sharing 15 or her favorite recipes. They include every course from appetizers to desserts and you will find the recipes  Here is another recipe for Overnight Raisin French Toast.

Relish Magazine - Food For Thought is featuring some great looking Pumpkin Recipes. The Ham and Cheese Stuffed Pumpkin sounds very good and the Pumpkin Cheddar Pesto Pizza sounds interesting. Also, if you follow this link, you will see several other great looking recipes. Get 'Em Fast Sticky Buns are filled with apples or pears. You make them the night before and bake them fresh in the morning. There is also a recipe for Martha's Tomato and Basil Pasta, and a yummy looking pizza. At the very end of the post, you will see a great looking recipe for Quick Gazpacho.

Allrecipes has compiled many baking recipes that use pumpkin. The Double Layer Pumpkin Pie and the Apple Butter Apple Pie sound really good for a nice change to old time favorites. The Orange Pumpkin Loaf sounds really good too. You will find all of these recipes and more right here.

Posie Gets Cozy has an amazing looking Sour Cream Apple Pie and you are going to want her recipe. While you are there, you should check out her amazingly cute Felt Holiday Ornament Craft Kits. These would make great gifts or you just might want them for yourself! Her equally cute Friendly Bird Papier Mache are a must see. You could find little birds like this in a great boutique, but you can make them yourself with her patterns. If you like to crochet, check out her patterns here.

Joy the Baker has a popular recipe for Super Soft Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies. They look great and have been highly rated!

All Natural Fruit and Vegetable Cleaner

I don't like it when my trusty spray bottle is empty!

I am a firm believer in washing all produce before using. I want to do everything I can to wash off chemicals, wax, dirt and germs so we eat clean produce. I have been using fruit and vegetable spray/wash for several years. I knew where to buy it in the Los Angeles area, but I have not found any since we have been in Oregon. Of course, there was a solution; make my own. I found several recipes online, made my own, and now I am passing them on to you.

Easy Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

Sometimes things that say "easy" aren't really all that easy! Not everyone's interpretation of easy is the same. I believe that if you make these muffins, you will agree that they are very easy. This recipe has three ingredients; 2 spice cake mixes, one 30-ounce can of pumpkin and about 2 cups of chips. That's all there is to it!

I found this recipe about five years ago and have adapted it over time to what it is now. This batter is very stiff, but don't worry, it works. I would suggest using a mixer if you have one. The batter gets a little hard to stir by hand and the dry mix has a way of jumping out of the bowl with every stir.

This recipe is very adaptable. For this batch, I used one spice cake mix and one carrot cake mix, only because that is all they had at the store. (Freddie's has their cake mixes 10 for $10.00 this week and a lot of other people got there first.) I have used chocolate cake mix, yellow cake mix with the extra spice added and I have made them without chips. A couple of times I have added pecans. For this batch, I used a combination of milk chocolate chips, white chocolate chips and about 1/3 cup of left over caramel chips. You can also use one cake mix and a small can of pumpkin to make a half batch, about six medium sized muffins.

I used a medium sized muffin tin and it took 25 minutes to bake them. These are very moist, full of fiber from the pumpkin and no added fat. Here are a few pictures.

Batter before it went in the oven

Fresh from the oven

Cooled and ready for consumption

Here is the recipe:

Enjoy!

Red Fox Bakery

We did a little traveling over the weekend. We were headed west, which made it the perfect opportunity to make a stop in McMinnville, Oregon. Bon Appetit named McMinnville one of the countries top six "foodiest towns" last month, so we stopped by to check it out. Specifically, the Red Fox Bakery/Cafe!

McMinnville is home to the beautiful campus of Linfield College, the Evergreen Aviation Museum and is considered by many to be the "wine capital" of Oregon. Those are all great places, but we went to McMinnville to find the Red Fox Bakery! I had read a lot about them and liked what I had read. They are McMinnville's first artisan bakery and they feature true handcrafted breads and pastries. They use all local products, including butter that is made a mile away, they grow their own herbs and make their own jams. As well as pastries, they serve lunch, using all fresh and local ingredients.

If you aren't ready to drop what you are doing and head on over there right now, I guess I will have to show you some pictures!

Red Fox Bakery 328 Evans Street, McMinnville, Oregon

Scone - with fresh apples

Brioche - with fresh nectarines

Cookie - with almonds

Lulu's Macaroons - made with pure vanilla and a touch of honey, never corn syrup

With the exception of Lulu's macaroons, everything is named very basic; scone, cookie, etc. The baker shopped at McMinnville's Farmers Market for inspiration for the daily scone and found local fresh apples and nectarines for the brioche. One bite of the scone and cookie revealed a very fresh and delicately sweetened taste that was very refreshing, compared to the overly sweetened taste of most commercially produced baked goods.  It is a very down home kind of place and you really should check out the Red Fox Bakery if you are in the neighborhood.