All Things Pumpkin!

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Fall is here, and that can only mean one thing–all things pumpkin! If the definition of fall is cooler temperatures, crispy leaves, and sweaters, then it doesn’t really arrive here in Texas until sometime in December. 🙂 It’s not always cool here on the first day of fall, so I have to manufacture fall around me. I do that by pulling out all the stops with pumpkinry. Is that a word? Let’s make it one right now. 🙂

As if pumpkins weren’t lovely to look at, they also have enchanting names like Jack-Be-Little, Cinderella, Fairytale, Baby Boo, Warty Goblin, and Sweetie Pie. Simply magical.

I love when Pumpkin Spice Lattes start showing up at Starbucks. That is a sure sign that eventually the weather will cool off here. We’ve had a few cool-ish snaps, but nothing has stuck for good yet. Even though it is still hot here, I love what adding pumpkins all around me does for my mood. And when I say all around me, I mean it.

I put them on my porch.

I put them in my dining room.

I serve meals with them.

I bake stuff into the shape of pumpkins.

These are so easy to make, by the way. You just take frozen yeast dinner rolls (I like Rhodes Yeast Dinner Rolls or Rhodes Texas Rolls), and thaw them until they are thawed but still cold. Shape each one into a slightly flat ball. Then take scissors and make six to eight equally spaced cuts around the outside of each roll about 1/2″ deep.

Using the handle of a wooden spoon, make a deep hole in the top of each roll.

Place all of your pumpkin rolls on a greased baking sheet and cover with plastic wrap that has been coated with a non-stick spray. Allow the rolls to rise until they have doubled in size.

Remove the plastic wrap and use the wooden spoon to repoke the hole in the top of the roll.

Bake for 15-20 minutes in a 350-degree Fahrenheit oven until the pumpkins are nice and brown. Take the rolls out and brush them with butter. Then insert small pecan pieces into the hole made by the wooden spoon to look like stems.

Eat as soon as possible. 🙂

I also place pumpkins around the house.

I place them on my piano, along with a sign that reminds me it is fall.

I put them on the mantle.

I sit them on side tables.

I put pumpkins on my face.

 

And in my coffee.

Have you tried these Skinny Syrups Whipped Toppings? They have zero calories and no sugar. They come in lots of yummy flavors and you just shake the bottle and squirt the foam on top of your coffee. And they don’t need to be refrigerated! Note to self: add these to Hurricane Survival Kit. It’s all about the creature comforts. 🙂

I even dress my little dog up like a pumpkin. 🙂

And I LOVE to bake in pumpkin-themed baking pans. And I have more than a few. I am so fascinated by baking pans. Some of them have almost an architectural element to them. I can’t wait to show you my Christmas pans soon. 🙂

This pan makes tasty little bite-size treats!

And I just recently added this one to my collection. I can’t wait to make a pumpkin flavored loaf in this one.

 

So I have submitted enough evidence to prove that I kinda dig pumpkins? 🙂

I love using my baking pans in the fall. I am a better baker than I am a cook. I’m a rules girl, so when a recipe says to add two tablespoons of something, that is what I do. Regular cooking is sometimes a little feral, and I’m just not adventurous enough to do it as well as others. But baking. That makes sense to my brain. It is an exact science. You do what the recipe says and something wonderful happens. So baking and I get along great.

Some of my favorite baking cookbooks are from Anne Byrn. She is the author of The Cake Mix Doctor series. She creates recipes using cake mixes as the foundation and then adding other ingredients to produce a wonderful cake that tastes like you spent hours putting it together from scratch. She has recipes for all different kinds of cakes, even gluten-free. And because Anne really gets me, she devoted an entire cookbook to chocolate cakes. 🙂

Here’s a recipe for Anne’s Holiday Pumpkin Cake from her website if you are in the mood to whip up a delicious cake using a cake mix. 

And don’t forget about your college students away at school! They need pumpkins too, and they probably don’t have a lot of space to decorate. Why not get them an artificial carvable pumpkin together with a battery operated pumpkin light (no flames in the dorm room!) and a carving kit representing their university? Have you seen these? They are so fun. Each kit comes with a carving tool, a scoop, and six team stencils so your college student can show their school spirit!

There are quite a few teams available, including:

Alabama Crimson Tide
Oklahoma State University Cowboys
Indiana University Hoosiers
Oklahoma Sooners
West Virginia Mountaineers
Tennessee Volunteers
Kansas Jayhawks
Kansas State Wildcats
Auburn Tigers
Florida Gators
Ohio State Buckeyes

Shop the baking pans from my collection (in order as shown above):

Nordic Ware Autumn Delights Cakelette Pan
Nordic Ware Autumn Treats Pan
Nordic Ware Harvest Mini Loaf Pan
Nordic Ware Pumpkin Patch Loaf Pan

Nordic Ware Pumpkin Wheat Loaf Pan

Have you overdosed on pumpkins yet? Me neither. 🙂 It seems like time goes by so quickly this time of year, so I start pumpkinfying everything in early September and leave it up until after Thanksgiving when it’s time to switch out to Christmas stuff. I hope I’ve given you some ideas for using pumpkins in your home. Here’s to all things pumpkin! 🙂

If you have any pumpkin ideas to share, please leave a comment below!

And don’t forget to check out Pinterest!