Autumn is Here... Time For Punkin' Bread!

The Amazing Disappearing Punkin' Bread!

I still need to write the blog about Vivi's and my joint birthday party, but in the meantime I'd like to share my Punkin' Bread recipe! I have already made this three times this fall, it's completely addictive and the perfect complement to a cup of coffee on a crisp Fall morning! I call it Punkin' Bread because my little punkins just love it! Bella christened it "punkin' cake" because it's so sweet. I make it in a bundt pan, and there is always enough left over to fill a small loaf pan, and I usually give the spare loaf away. It doesn't really need any kind of adornment but I usually put either cream cheese or butter on it because I like to mix salty and sweet flavors. This Fall though, I tried something different. The first loaf I made was for Vivi's party and I had also made a cake (obviously, it's a birthday party) and I had kind of panicked thinking I wasn't going to have enough frosting for the cake, so I whipped up a batch of buttercream frosting from scratch using this recipe. When the frosting I had turned out to indeed be enough for the cake I was left with a preponderance of unassigned buttercream frosting, which can be totally dangerous... Imagine Liz with a spoon and a bucket of buttercream frosting, huddling in a dark corner muttering "my precious, my precious!"... So I tried putting it on the punkin' bread, and it was mind-blowingly delicious. Since that was so good, this last time I made it I tried some browned butter icing, which is also excessively scrumptious! I hope you enjoy it as much as I do! (Punkin' Bread and Browned Butter Icing Recipes follow)

Punkin' Bread!

Ingredients:
3 Eggs
1 Cup Vegetable Oil
2 1/4 Cups Granulated Sugar
2 15 oz cans of Pumpkin
2 Tablespoons Vanilla Extract
3 Cups All-Purpose Flour
1 Tablespoon Cinnamon
1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
1 1/4 Teaspoon Baking Powder
1 Tablespoon Pumpkin Pie Spice

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350.

Beat eggs, add oil, pumpkin and vanilla. Add sugar and continue to mix until smooth.

Sift together dry ingredients and slowly add to pumpkin mixture until fully incorporated.

Grease the pan before adding the batter to bake - I use copious amounts of  Pam cooking spray.

Makes enough for two regular sized loaf pans, or a standard sized bundt pan and a small loaf pan.

Bake at 350 for one hour for cake/loaves, or 10-15 minutes for muffins.

I remove my Punkin' Bread by putting the cake carrier base over the top of the pan (while it's still warm, but not straight from the oven) and (using potholders so as to not burn your hands) turn the pan over on top of the cake base, it should slide right out, with a little wiggling.

Punkin' Bread stores well in a cake carrier or cake stand, out on the countertop for about five days, or longer if you can fit it in your fridge. It can also be frozen.


Browned Butter Icing:

Ingredients:
1 Tablespoon butter
2 Cups Powdered Sugar
2-4 Tablespoons Milk

Instructions:
Melt butter in a small saucepan on medium-low heat until it is golden brown and bubbly, but be careful to not scorch it.

Remove saucepan from heat and mix icing in the pan itself.

Add Powdered Sugar, do not mix

Add milk, one tablespoon at a time, mixing with a wire whisk.

Icing should be smooth and runny but not watery. For best results, store the icing in a tupperware in the fridge and warm it up by the spoonful, one with each slice of Punkin' Bread (in the microwave, 15-20 seconds on high.) You can put it directly on to the bread and warm them both together, or warm the icing itself in a ramekin and then pour it over the Punkin' Bread.

Punkin' Bread and vanilla latte!

When warming up the icing, put it on the punkin bread cold

then microwave them both together for 20 seconds

it's not as pretty, but just as delicious!

My Library

This place is my sanctuary. I love curling up in the papasan chair with a good book and a glass of wine or a cup of coffee. I have just recently added a children's section to the library, and moved the papasan... maybe one day I'll finally have the upright piano I want so badly and it can go on the opposite wall. I added a couple of Bella's overflowing collection of stuffed animals, specifically the ones that are literary based, next to their books kind of like the children's section of a bookstore. It's fun, and the girls love going in there and playing with the toys and reading! And it went a long way toward getting some of the stuffed animals out of Bella's room!

There Are Places I Remember...

The house I grew up in

It's been a while since I posted, I've been super busy so my blogs are back-logged. Back-logged blogs... say that five times fast... Anyway, on September 13 my oldest and dearest friend Ashley sent me a text telling me to pack my bags because we were going on a surprise trip down memory lane for my birthday! I grew up in Victoria, Texas, which is (for most people) a pit stop on highway 59 between Houston and Corpus Christi. It's too large to be considered a small town, when I was living there the population was around 40,000. However, since it's pretty far removed from other cities it functions very much like a small town and has that small town siren call that keeps natives coming back.

My sister Katie holds our cat Abe

It may not seem like a fun trip to most people, even to Ashley because she lived there much longer than I did, but she knew that I would really like to go there, and she even arranged a meeting with our 4th grade teacher, Ms. Prince, in whose class we met in October of 1993!

I was born in the Calhoun County hospital in Port LaVaca because my parents had been living in Point Comfort until right before I was born and my mom's Obstetrician was there. I lived in Victoria at 504 Joplin Street from birth until just before my 13th birthday. To this day Victoria holds the record for my longest residency in any Texas city, although I suspect it will soon be outstripped by Austin in a couple of years.

My family moved to Victoria because my dad got a job at the Brown and Root plant there, and none of the rest of our family lived there, so when we moved away in the Fall of 1996 there wasn't much reason to visit. We did go back and forth periodically for the next three years because it took us that long to sell our house, and I went back every once in a while throughout high school and in to college to visit Ashley and her family, but now that they've moved to the Austin area, it has been at least six years since I went back.

Some of my old class mates (5th grade) play on a piece of
playground equipment that has since been removed

Ashley took me to visit my old landmarks, we went to Vickers Elementary School, and checked out my old house, which is three blocks away. I used to walk to and from school until I was old enough to ride my bike. We visited the Victoria Mall which is basically the only thing to do in town most days. We visited my old home church, Trinity Episcopal, where I also attended school for second grade, by a stroke of good fortune the organist was there and he let us in and we roamed around, breathing in my past. It was really odd because they have never moved around the class rooms, and the second grade class room is in exactly the same spot it was in when I was there. However, there is now a portable building where there used to be a small playground, and they turned the old library into a computer lab. C'est la vie.

Ashley and I climbed an old jungle gym - this was silver
when we were in school

I have never had the courage to go up to my old house and knock on the door and ask to come inside. I know it would be completely different if I did, new furniture, new smells... That's why I was so happy to be able to go back into my old church where not much has changed. I had Miranda Lambert's "The House That Built Me" stuck in my head all weekend though.

My 5th grade class

Ms. Prince was my 4th grade teacher at the beginning of the year, and due to large class sizes they had to hire a new teacher half way through the year and I was moved to her class. Her name was Mrs. Miller. Mrs. Miller and Ms. Prince were my favorite teachers from elementary school. Mrs. Miller moved from Vickers to Howell Middle School in 1995 but I didn't have her in sixth grade. At some point in time she must have moved away from Victoria, but Ms. Prince is still teaching 4th grade at Vickers, she's in her 37th year of teaching!

We thought this was the same slide, it's in roughly the same
place, but I'm not sure it is, you can tell the top is
different in the two pictures.

The kickball field!

The interior of the sanctuary, from my family's
usual pew, on the same side as the pulpit
of course

Trinity Episcopal Church front

My dad stands in the parking lot looking very Episcopalian

Me in second grade as a private school kid

This is probably 4th grade... hard to tell...
I look like Ashley's mom I'm so much taller. I still kinda do.

This is what I wrote in the margins of my year
book next to Ms. Prince's name, "The most cool,
sweet, Christian woman I've ever known" other
than my mom, obviously!

Ashley, Ms. Prince and I reunite at IHOP! She looks
exactly the same as she did twenty years ago!

Mrs. Miller - probably my favorite teacher. I had her for
5th grade as well as the second half of 4th grade.