Festive Fall Dinner Party

We had such a fun weekend last weekend! It got off to a great start on Friday night with our newly married friends Angela and Tushar, who came over for dinner. Rich went to grad school at MIT with Angela and we have loved living close by her this year! They have had a busy few months getting married, moving in together and traveling to Seattle and Taipei so we look forward to seeing more of them when their travel schedule lightens.
I planned a festive fall themed menu for our dinner and it came out quite delicious if I say so myself! I made drunken pumpkin chili, pumpkin cornbread with honey pecan butter, salad with apple, pecans and blue cheese, and honeycrisp apple sangria, and we had mini cupcakes from Sprinkles Cupcakes for dessert.

I was going to have shredded cheese and cut-up avocado as sides for the chili, but that day I discovered the cheese was moldy and the avocado wasn't ripe yet, so no dice on those. We did have sour cream on the side at least.

I made the chili on Thursday so it had a whole day for the flavors to meld in the fridge and I thought it came out quite good. I threw in all kinds of ingredients; I'm not sure if I can remember everything that went into it!  Chili is always a smorgasbord of all the fresh vegetables, grains and legumes I have handy. I chopped an onion, a bell pepper, a tomato, three carrots, and half a large sweet potato, and started sauteing those. I added two cans of chickpeas, two cans of black beans, the remainder of a bag of quinoa, some oat bran, a can of pumpkin puree, an Oktoberfest beer, a jar of tomato sauce, some Tofurky kielbasa, and some water for the quinoa and oat bran to soak up. For spices I added chili powder, cumin, coriander, oregano, garlic powder, salt and pepper. I'm sure there were more ingredients but that's all I remember now! After a few hours simmering on the stove it smelled warm and inviting.

I failed to take a picture of the chili - this one is from Sweet Pea's Kitchen. It looked kind of like this.

While the chili simmered I also made the honey pecan butter (which is just honey, butter, and pecans blended together in a blender or food processor) and the salad dressing, which was inspired by the best salad I shared a while back.

¼ cup vinegar (any type) - I used apple cider vinegar
½ cup chopped parsley  - I used half parsley and half basil
¼ cup red onion/shallot, chopped
2 cloves garlic
1/3 cup sugar - I used some agave nectar, less than 1/3 cup
½ cup oil
½ tsp. oregano
Salt & pepper to taste

It's also just all thrown in the blender. My blender got a workout on Thursday. 

On Friday, I made the pumpkin cornbread. I don't bake very often and I hate the mess of flour, so I decided to try grinding oats in the blender to make oat flour instead of using all-purpose flour for a healthier twist. It was a success!  I can't wait to try making all kinds of whole grain flours this way. It was super easy, and I didn't have to buy flour! I used this recipe from sweet pea's kitchen and I would definitely make it again. It was easy to throw together, pretty healthy and TASTY with the honey pecan butter. Although, to be totally honest, that honey pecan butter makes EVERYTHING you put it on taste amazing. My friend Lindsey introduced me to that idea a few years ago and I have been keeping it in my back pocket ever since. 

honey pecan butter

pumpkin cornbread - picture by Sweet Pea's Kitchen

I also made the sangria, and rimmed the glasses with cinnamon and sugar. My favorite party trick! Rimming glasses is so easy and really takes the fancy factor up a notch. I used this recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction and of course modified it to match what I had since I did not have brandy. Instead I added some triple sec and cranberry vodka. 

We had a blast catching up with Angela and Tushar, and hearing stories about boarding school days and learning Chinese growing up. Always a great time! 

We had the red velvet and caramel apple mini cupcakes... mmmm

Yummy festive Pumpkin cake balls !

Hey blog, I thought I'd shock you by posting for the first time in about a year and a half! What up! Exciting things are happening in my world. Beyond getting engaged and married since my last post, my friends are starting to pop out babies (on purpose)! You know what that means... time to take a familiar recipe and turn it into a fun and fabulous treat to celebrate a baby milestone! My friend Sarah, who was my college roommate and is now my coworker as well as daily lunchmate and comrade, just found out yesterday that her adorable 20-week-old bump contains a little GIRL! And, since the day after tomorrow marks the first day of fall (okay, it's still a TAD early), I thought, what could be better than a pumpkin dessert to say, IT'S A GIRL!!

So I got this weight watchers recipe for pumpkin muffins a couple years ago from my roommate at the time and it is the easiest, most delicious and crowd pleasing recipe, I swear. It comes out every fall and wins new fans. Here's that recipe:

1 box cake mix (yellow or spice)
1 15-oz can pumpkin
1 cup water
1 bag cinnamon chips

Combine ingredients. Divide into 24 muffin cups and bake at 350F for 22 minutes. Each muffin is 150 calories.

DEEEELISH and I promise everyone who has ever tried one of these will become obsessed!

So, I was feeling ambitious yesterday and I decided to adapt this pumpkin muffin recipe into pumpkin cake balls!! Kroger was, of course, out of canned pumpkin but they did have some canned pumpkin pie mix (with the extra sugar, spices and preservatives added) so I worked with that.

I picked out a "golden butter recipe" cake mix (one of these days my goal is to figure out this recipe without the cake mix so it doesn't have all the corn syrup, trans fat and preservatives... but, there's a limit to my ambition for one day!!).

So I made the cake in 2 9-inch round pans which cooked in about 30 minutes and made the apartment smell gloriously of pumpkin cake. This was just the cake mix, water and pumpkin. SO EASY!!

While the cake was baking I made the icing from scratch, using my Kitchenaid stand mixer. It's probably maybe the third time I've ever used it, which is sad! That thing is worth more than everything else I own combined and it does amazing things. One day I swear to use it to its full potential. The icing is:

1 stick butter (I use light butter)
8 oz cream cheese (I use the reduced fat kind)
2 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla

I added a little cinnamon too because who doesn't love cinnamon in her pumpkin dessert!

Then, give the cake maybe half an hour to cool so you don't burn yourself, and then toss the cake and icing into a bowl and mix and mash it up. It makes a mush, which is formed into balls. This recipe turned out extra mushy from all the icing, so it would probably be advised to throw it into the fridge or freezer (depending on how much time you have) so it's a little firmer for ball making.

Next come the cinnamon chips! Heat water in a double boiler and melt a bag of cinnamon chips along with a glug of vegetable oil (or, my friend Jessica adds wax to hers) to make it melt more smoothly. Roll the cake balls in the melted cinnamon goop until they're coated and set them on wax paper. Add more cinnamon chips as you run out; I used close to two bags for this recipe.

If you want to decorate them now is the time; I wrote "it's a girl!" in pink icing on mine, and did a couple different ones, with mini chocolate chips, sprinkles, and icing designs on them, but plain is totally good too. You can get so creative with cake balls, I love it!

Then keep them in the freezer and enjoy at any temperature! Personally I think these work best frozen or really cold.

They were a big hit in the office! YUMMM.... CONGRATULATIONS SARAH!!!! Can't wait to meet baby girl Kortz!!!