Kabocha Squash Coffee Cake

Squash is an awesome versatile vegetable, wouldn't you agree? It can sit on your counter for weeks and wont go bad, it can be added to everything from soups, casseroles, and even baked goods.  I even used squash as the sauce in mac n cheese and it was a-ma-zing!  I don't know why it took me this long to start using squash....oh ya maybe because the commissary charges over $6 bucks for any type of squash, it wasn't till I ventured off base and started shopping for my produce at the local Japanese farmers market that I realize how cheap squash really is.  The same sized squash I buy on base for over $6 dollars I can get off base for under $2 bucks, crazy right.  

I've been stocking up on squash and searching for a wide variety of recipes to start using it, not only is it cheap, its super hearty for vegetarians, full of fiber and vitamins and it can be added to every dish.   I recently used the Kabocha squash (Japanese pumpkin squash) in a chickpea stew, mac n cheese and now this delicious coffee cake.  Whats great about Japanese pumpkin squash is that it taste a lot like the normal orange pumpkin you can buy for Halloween.  Its slightly sweet, a pain in the ass to cut though and orange in color.  I've been making a lot of dishes lately with pumpkin and have turned a pumpkin hater co-worker into a pumpkin lover now, especially after she tried this coffee cake, her mom even wanted to recipe :) When a mom wants your recipe you know you got something special.

Next time, I'll be doubling the crumb mixture because you can never had enough added to the top.

Kabocha Squash Coffee Cake
Servings: 10-12 

Ingredients

Crumb Mixture

1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup cooking oats
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3 tablespoons cold un salted butter

Directions

1.  Add all the dry ingrentins into a bowl and mix until combined,
2.  Cut in your cold butter and mix until the mixture is crumbly. I find that using a fork helps or just my hands. Set the bowl aside when finished.

Cake

1/2 cup butter flavored shortening
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup mashed cooked kabocha squash (or any othre sweet squash like pumpkin or butternut)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
A pinch of ground cloves
1/2 cup unsweetned applesauce

Directions

1.  Preheat your oven at 350 degrees and grease a 9-in springform pan. 
2.  In a medium bowl combined your dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda, ginger, nutmeg,   and clove. whisk until combined and set aside.
3.   In an electric mixer cream together the shortening and sugar on high until light and fluffy, about 3 min.
4.  Beat in the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
5.  Beat in the squash and vanilla.
6.  Gradually add in your dry ingredients into the creamed mixture until fully combined.
7.  Spoon half of your batter into the greased sprinform pan, using the back of a spoon to help spread it evenly.
8.  Spread your appleasauce over the batter in the pan and sprinkle with half of the crumb mixture.
9.  Spread the remaming batter over the applesauce/crumb mixture, using the back of a spoon again to help spread it evenly.  Add the remaining crumb mixture to the top.
10.  Bake for 50-55 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. (FYI my oven bakes fast so it was done early. around the 40-45 min mark. so test your cake early.)
11.  Cool for 10 minutes before removing the sides of the pan. Makes about 10-12 servings.

Recipe adapted from Taste of Home

Crumb Coffee Cake

Its good to be home and back in my kitchen ~ But I think I'm going to need another vacation from my recent vacation.

When we set out for our trip 3 weeks ago to the states to visit family I had not fully prepared myself with the amount of traveling we decided to cram into 3 weeks.  I'm still in disbelief on how many miles we drove, walked and even rowed.  We easily covered over 1500 miles, traveling to 4 different states and another country (Canada).

The best highlights of the trip were starting off in New York City for 2 nights where we walked  10 miles of Manhattan to eat at the "first" pizza place Lombardi's, checked out the Empire State Building, visited the Space Shuttle Enterprise at the Intrepid Museum, by the way free for active duty :) and hitched a ferry ride to Staten Island to catch a glimpse of the statue of Liberty.  After leaving NYC we picked up our car in Syracuse and headed south to Pennsylvania to Hersey Park and went to a Dave Matthews Concert (totally awesome!), then headed up towards Scranton to visit my brother in-law, his gf and our niece for the first time.  (This was the first 5 days)

The best bagel cream cheese in Lox in all of NY

Intrepid Museum 

Biggest Ladder Back Chair in the world

Dave Matthews 

After our time in PA we drove to Vermont to visit family, play some disc golf and had fish in chips in 

Massachusetts with Grandma.  Took a detour to Lake George and camped out for 3 nights on a island in the middle of the lake, did a little kayaking, cliff jumping (small cliff), tubing, watched an amazing electric storm on the lake..oh and was savagely attacked by mosquitos.  We kept traveling north for  a reunion in Plattsburg NY later that evening went even further north to Montreal Canada where we stayed in the historic part of downtown in a cute little hotel watching fireworks from the bridge, walking the entire city checking out local shops and restaurants and trying putine for the first time, which by the way is fries smothered in gravy and topped with cheese curds...delicious!! (All this in week 2)

Putine

Cliff Jumping Lake George 

Birds eye view of Montreal 

After our stay in Canada we left to meet up with my father in-law at his camp in the Andirondacks where we stayed a couple of nights, went canoeing, boating and thrift shopping. the last leg of our journey we headed back to Syracuse to catch up on sleep, laundry and more sleep before leaving to go back to Japan.

 All in all it was a very successfully trip, we saw a lot of family that we haven't seen an a couple of years, our rental car never gave us issues and for the most part we didn't get lost when driving all over the northeastern side of the country.

Now to the food, I made this coffee cake before I left on vacation, some co-workers were craving it, this recipe came out amazing, very light, sweet and the huge brown sugar crumbles are delicious, they were my favorite part.  Place this cake soaks up coffee like a sponge.

Crumb Coffee Cake

Adapted from Sally's baking addiction

1 Tablespoon Flour, to coat the pan
2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
10 tablespoons cold butter, lightly softened in the microwave for 20 seconds
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 large egg
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, spray a 9 inch springform pan with cooking spray and sprinkle the bottom of the pan with flour, tapping out excess flour.

2. Whisk the flour, sugar, salt together in a large bowl until combined.  Cut the butter into 1 tablespoon sized pieces and using your hands or a fork mix/mash together the butter and dry ingredients until it resembles a crumbly mixture. scoop out 1 cup of the mixture and set it aside.

3. Transfer the rest of the ingredients from the large mixing bowl into an electric mixer (the batter is going to be very thick and the mixer helps a lot) Add in the baking soda and powder and mix together for 1 minute. Add in the buttermilk, egg, vanilla and mix everything together on medium high speed for about 2 minutes until smooth and fluffy, the batter will look kinda of like frosting, pour the batter into the springform pan and using a spatula smooth the top of the batter until even in the pan.

4. Using your empty large mixing bowl add in the reserved 1 cup of flour mixture and add in the brown sugar and cinnamon, using a fork or your hands crumble up the ingredients together making course crumbs. Sprinkle the crumbs over the batter, pressing lightly so the crumbs stick to the batter.

5.  Bake for 50-55 minutes (mine took 50) or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean, allow to cool on a wire rack for about 10 minutes, remove the side of the springform pan and cool completely to room temp.

Old Fashioned Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Military Life:  Okay, so I'm swimming in oatmeal right now, I have about 3 giant containers of oatmeal currently in my pantry and there is no possible way me and my husband can finish it all before their expiration date.  Now I didn't go to the store and purposely buy an over abundance of oatmeal on my own, I acquired most of it from friends PCSing (Permanent change of Station).  We like our acronyms in the military.

In the military we normally move about every 3 to 4 years. You'll stay at one base for a period of time until you receive orders for another base somewhere around the world.  So usually your neighbors and friends around you are constantly moving in or moving out and that means people have to get rid of persihbles they cannot pack with them, because honestly you wont see your house hold goods for about 2 months while moving to another base. 

One of my neighbors just packed her goods for Germany (I'm jealous!) and had a ton of left over baking goods and donated them to me.  So now its up to me to put all this oatmeal to good use and why not make something that is nostalgic to childhood and bake some delicious chewy oatmeal raisin cookies. I love my cookies with tons of oatmeal and raisins in every bite, some people are raisin haters, but not I, please give me a cookie loaded with sweet raisins. 

 I made these cookies with a limited amount of sugar (no white sugar either) tons of raisins and added some cinnamon and ginger. These cookies baked up nice and plump with the raisins giving the cookie some added sweetness, these go perfect with a giant glass of milk. More oatmeal goodies to come, can't wait to share another oatmeal cookie version with you soon, a little hint theres going to be coconut : )

Old Fashioned Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Recipe from Oishii Treats

Yields: 30-34 cookies

Ingredients

2 cups old fashioned oatmeal
1 1/4 cups flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
3/4 cup butter (12 tablespoons), at room temp
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup rasins


Directions

- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper
- In a large mixing bowl whisk together the oatmeal, flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and ginger and set aside.
- In a electric mixer beat your butter and brown sugar together until fluffy, scraping the side of the bowl when needed, about 3 minutes. Add in your eggs one at a time until fully incorporated and then your vanilla extract.
- On low speed slowly add in your dry ingredients, scrapping down the side of the bowl to get all the flour combined, once done switch to medium/high speed and mix the dough until all ingredients are combined.  Add in the raisins and mix for 30 seconds.
- Using a spoon roll about a 1inch ball of dough and slightly flatten with the palm of your hand, place the on the cookie sheet about 2 inches apart from one another, I could fit about 9 on my cookie sheet.

- Bake for 13-14 minutes, remove from oven and let sit on the cookie sheet for 4 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an air tight container for up to 3 days.

French Toast Cupcakes w/ Maple Buttercream

   So I went on my first snowboarding trip in Japan and probably my last.  Snowboarding is just not meant for me, I'am a firm believer that its just one of those sports you need to start as a kid, where a couple of falls on your butt won't jack up your already bad back and leave bruises from head to toe.  

Oh did I mention that I also fell off the ski lift :/  I was so afraid of the lifts to begin with because they don't stop for you, they just scoop you up and you pray your in the right position when it arrives. So as it happened yesterday I wasn't in the right positon and that lift just knocked me off with no sympathy, I felt like I was punched in the hip by a sumo wrestler. 

I guess this really is my fault,  I should have known what to expect when I had my first true experience snow boarding in Alaska 4 years ago and ended up with a minor concussion, I should have known my second chance snow boarding in Japan wouldn't be any different.  It took about 2 hours to get down the mountain and I hurt my back so bad and was starting to come down with a stomach bug that I decided to throw in the towel and take a nap on a small love seat in a hotel lounge while the rest of the people on the trip were still snowboarding and the hubby went to the onsen. Oh well

After a day of being beaten up and feeling my age I decided that I owed my self a treat and made my favorite breakfast in a cupcake form.  These babies will not disappoint they literally taste like french toast with a delicious maple buttercream.  

French Toast Cupcakes
Adapted from Bakingdom
Yields: 24-28 cupcakes


For the Streusel 
Ingredients

1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, sliced into chunks

Cupcake

3 cups flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tablespoons baking powder
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoons nutmeg
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sour cream
4 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Directions for Streusel

In a medium bowl, combine the dry ingredients and add in the cold butter using your hands to mix and squeeze the mixture together crumbling it up.  once complete cover and place in the freezer until ready to top on the batter.

Directions for the Cupcakes

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line your cupcake tins with paper liners; set aside.
In your electric mixer bowl add your flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt and whisk on low speed until mixed together.  Add in your butter, sour cream  eggs and vanilla, mix well until combined and smooth about 30-45 seconds.
Place 3 tablespoons of batter into each baking cup. and divide the streusel evenly among the cupcakes and top about 1 spoonful of streusel on top of each baking cup. Bake for 18 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Before they're baked

Before they're baked

After they're baked

Maple Buttercream

Ingredients

1 cup butter unsalted at room temperature
4 cups powdered sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup maple syrup (your favorite kind, I used Mrs. Butterworth)
2 tablespoons heavy cream

Directions

In a electric mixer, beat the butter on high speed until light and fluffy, (this could take a little time about 8 to 10 minutes).

This is what the butter should look like, almost looks like fluff or whipped cream

Beat in the powdered sugar 1/4 cup at a time until all the powdered sugar has been incorporated

Add the vanilla, salt and syrup and mix until combined. Beat in the heavy cream and whisk on high for 4 minutes.

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Gingerbread Cinnamon Roll Pancakes

The hubby requested pancakes for christmas breakfast and I wanted to find something different then your basic pancake.  I happen to stubble upon a recipe for cinnamon roll pancakes which led me to another recipe for gingerbread cinnamon roll pancakes and it being x-mas and all I had to go with the gingerbread.... of course :) 

These pancakes were awesome, they not only tasted delicious but when you flip the pancake over to cook the swirl side and flip it back, it looks just like a cinnamon roll on top. The only thing is, I wish I could have shared these yummy pancakes with my family for christmas.  Though I can be happy that at least me and my husband can spend the holidays together instead of being deployed this year. I adapted this recipe a little since I didn't have all the ingredients it called for, and they still turned out superb!  and looked pretty cool too. 

Gingerbread Cinnamon Roll Pancakes 
Adapted from Recipe Girl
Yields: 6-8 pancakes
Prep: 15 minutes  Cook: 20 minutes

Ingredients

Cinnamon filling

1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

Pancake

3/4 cup milk
2 tablespoons brewed coffee
2 tablespoons dark mollasses
2 tablespoons water
1 large egg
1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1/2 tablespoons ground ginger
1/2 tablespoons ground baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions

Prepare the cinnamon filling before you make the pancakes.
- In a small bowl melt the butter in the microwave, takes about 20 - 40 seconds.
- Mix in the brown sugar and spices with a whisk, make sure that the mixture is combined well and not lumpy.
- Scoop the mixture into a small ziplock baggy and set aside (while your making the pancake batter the mixture will cool and thicken up a little)

Prepare the batter

- In a large bowl, whisk together the milk, coffee, molasses, water and egg.
- In a small bowl combine all the dry ingredients and mix well.
- Add your dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix till just combined. (don't over mix its okay if they are some lumps in the batter)

Cooking the pancakes

- Set your oven to warm or 200 degrees and add a pan into the oven, use this as a warmer tray for placing your cooked pancakes in, to keep warm while finishing the entire batter.
- Preheat a large skillet on medium heat and spray the pan with cooking spray
- Scoop a 1/3 measuring cup of batter into the skillet and spread it around a little to make a round shape
 - Take your zip lock baggy and cut a small hole in the corner and pipe a swirl onto your pancake.
- Cook the pancake for about 3 minutes until you start seeing bubbles on the side of the pancake, flip the pancake over and cook the swirl side for about 2 minutes, dont worry if you see some of the swirl mixture oozing out from under the pancake.
- Flip the pancake over to expose the swirl side and serve with syrup or they are great by themselves as well.  Enjoy.

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