Pumpkin-Apple Streusel Cake — Two Ways

A fast 9″x13″ cake for Halloween gatherings, holiday breakfasts, tailgates, or coffee any afternoon.

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How sweet it is to be home! I missed you!

Since I returned from a month-long trip last Sunday, I’d been thinking about a fall cake. Pumpkin or apple or maybe – probably – both. I wanted a chunky, dense sort of cake that a person could cut and grab a small (or large) hunk when sidling through the kitchen on the way to the mailbox. (I only had one bite!! Honest.) Something that, should we have need of it, would hold together in a lunch box or travel intact to a party without melting or crumbling or even shifting in the pan on the back seat. What about a goody to accompany a big cup of hot coffee out onto the deck some cool morning? Or one to sneak in bed with us sometime when that felt ok? (Are you a crumbs in the bed sort of person? While I’ll happily guzzle coffee in bed any day, I’m not a breakfast in bed woman, even when ill.) I had in mind what we currently call a snacking cake, which denotes an easy-to-make and easy to serve homey cake that’s for any time at all you need or want cake. Not an occasion dessert like birthday cake, wedding cake, or even an elegant dinner party cake but simply a hang around the kitchen, come as you are kinda cake. And while some snacking cakes boast a glaze, a frosting, or a fine dusting of powdered sugar, I was leaning, once again, toward a crowning cap of spicy streusel.

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Easy Coconut-Ginger Butternut Squash Soup

Based on pantry ingredients, this soup comes together in the flashiest of flashes.
(And, yes, I love “Love Actually”!)

I’m definitely too old for restaurant work, but I very occasionally do a small volunteer catering job if a friend sweetly asks. My caveats are 1. It’s during the day (unless you just want delivery of soup or stew when you’re in personal need) and for a worthy cause. My bedtime is 9pm, you see. 2. The menu is short and sweet since I have to do all of the cooking. My feet simply aren’t what they used to be. 3. The event isn’t for 100+ people. Commercial kitchen, I’m not. 4. I pick my own help. I’m all about having fun whenever I can. This week, one of those perfect jobs arrived that just about fit all of my requirements. A nearly vegetarian soup, salad, dessert lunch menu was on deck for 35 heads of local Colorado Springs non-profits, which means cook for 40. You never know when a plate will fall off a counter, a guest might bring along a friend, or someone’s starving and eats double. Best husband and sous, Dave, along with good friend/caterer Patti came along to help make it all possible as these things can’t be done alone. Huge thanks to Dave for being the master of the commercial dishwasher and to Patti who decorated the tables with vases of flowers from her own gardens. Both of them made salad, served soup, and kept everyone full and happy.

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Ham and Blue Cheese Spread for Game Day

One day it’s brats and beers on the sweltering deck. The next you’re turning on the heat along with the tv and searching for game day snacks. (Which still could be brats and beers.) It doesn’t seem as if that would be possible, but in Colorado, it often is. We could see just such a weather change several times over the course of any September. But there’s always one metamorphic day when our whole world definitely changes from summer to fall and that’s when “the mountain” (better known to the rest of the world as Pike’s Peak) looks like Brigadoon from my front yard:

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Pumpkin-Pepita Muffins

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Before moving to Colorado, I don’t remember eating pepitas, but I certainly got to them as fast as I could upon arrival. The tiny, full of health “pumpkin seeds” we eat for snacks, add to salads, tacos, omelets, or granola, and what I put on my muffins (above), aren’t like the pumpkin seeds you remove with all of the gloppy mess inside the typical Halloween jack-o-lantern. I mean, you could open up those big fat seeds (which have their own happy uses–see below at MORE THAN YOU WANTED TO READ) and try to get at the little inner seed, but that’s not where pepitas come from. Read on:

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