Trial by Pumpkin

A friend of ours sent in a pumpkin recipe, so I thought I would try it this morning.  It was a recipe for Pumpkin Scones.  Mmmm...sounds so good.  I set Eliana up in her high chair with a bowl of cereal, got Michaela going on some math review, and started dumping in my ingredients.

All was going well.  I added the pumpkin mixture (the puree, an egg, and 3 tablespoons whole milk) to my dry ingredients and gently folded that in with a spatula.  I put that mixture onto a floured surface and tried to get it into a ball, as the directions said.  It was obvious from the start of this part of the procedure that the dough was too moist.  I added a little flour and it didn't help a bit.  I added a little more, and a little more, and then I was afraid I was going to ruin the dough.  If you could have seen it you would say right now,"Going to ruin the dough?"  I was hoping that I hadn't already!  I decided the culprit of my sticky situation was...(dun, dun, dun)

I had to add quite a bit of water in order to blend the pumpkin chunks into the puree, so the extra water ended up in my scone dough.  And the dough didn't like it.  There was no way I was going to be able to make a rectangle and cut it and put the pieces onto a baking sheet.  It looked like I had on chenille gloves!  This stuff was so sticky.

I decided to try to make a sort of muffin instead.  What would we call them?  Scuffins?  Scofins?  Muffones?  I'm kind of partial to scuffins myself.  Michaela likes scofins.  While pondering these deeply philosophical questions and their existential effects,both good and bad, I dropped/oozed the dough (batter?) into my muffin tin.

It seemed like it might work, but I didn't know about timing it in the oven.  I set the timer according to the scone recipe and thought if I needed to add a minute or so, I could.  They came out like this:

Oh!  Where did that muffin go?!  

Alright, I confess.  I ate it.  I had to make sure it was done...

I put them back in for two minutes.  Then they were cooked all the way through.  They turned out very dense, but still fairly moist.

Must've been that extra water, no doubt.  I planned it that way.  Yeah, I meant to do that.

I wondered what would happen if I put maple syrup on it...

I got some interesting results...

I finished them up by adding the spice glaze that the original recipe calls for, which is how Michaela wanted to eat hers.  They were pretty good, too.

I have to say, it didn't go quite like I thought it would.  But we all thought they tasted yummy.  And I am in the process of draining some of the liquid out of the pumpkin puree before trying any other recipes.  Water is such a trouble-maker.  Seems so unassuming, but watch out!  You never know just when it's going to cause some confusion.  Of course, it doesn't take much to confuse me...

Comments

[Laurie Lee]

That's hilarious! Clever thinking on the muffin tins. I'll have to try the recipe sometime...however, I'll be using canned pumpkin. :-)

[missy@WhatsGoingOnHere?!]

I love scuffins! I might steal it. Did you need to add water to get the puree to move in your blender? IF so, I discovered that stick blenders do this job better. You are a funny, funny, girl.