This is a trend that I’ve been seeing recently on some of the bread-baking sites that I follow: shaping a regular loaf of bread (a standard boule) into a pumpkin loaf. There is nothing pumpkin or pumpkin-spice flavored about this bread: it is just a regular loaf of my standard artisan sourdough bread. But to make it a little festive, you can imprint the loaf by loosely tying cooking twine around it before baking. I used a cinnamon stick as the “stem” just to complete the look. Makes a nice presentation for a harvest / autumn / Thanksgiving meal.
breakfast
I’ve been meaning to make these Cocoa Krispies Bar Mummies for a couple of years now, but somehow Halloween has rolled around and either I’ve forgotten or I was already working on the Cookies and didn’t have time to run to the shops for the ingredients. But here we are: meltingly soft cocoa krispies bars (the trick is adding a bit of condensed milk) with white chocolate coating, cute little eyeballs.
Alice in Wondoughland, my sourdough started, had gone into hiberation for a few weeks whilst I was in Germany, but she’s all thawed out and ready to rise again! First up: these super fluffy Honey Cinnamon Sourdough Brioche Sweet Rolls. Definitely something to have for breakfast, but not nearly as sweet or sugar-overload like a cinnamon bun (don’t get me wrong; I love those too, just in a different way. Great fresh out of the oven with a bit of butter.
Honey Crisp Apples are my favorite apples. Pink Ladies are a close second, but I do like Honey Crisps the best. The dilemma with that is that often Honey Crisp Apples are HUGE — I’ve seen them the size of grapefruit and that is not so much fun. My solution is that I go apple picking, like I did this past weekend, and seek out the really small ones. IMO opinion, they are better for pies and in this case, jam. The jam is partially made of unpasteurized, from-the-farm cider, which was also mostly honey crisps, so double the goodness!
As is annual tradition, I did manage to go strawberry picking this past weekend. It was not the greatest fun, to be honest with you, as a number of places were facing significant crop loss this season, so the season was even shorter than usual and the berries were tough picking. Nevertheless, I managed 10 quarts, most which ended up in this jam!





