Adventures in Cooking

It was a good day for cooking! It was really cold out, so I happily spent a few hours in the kitchen. I didn't get in a run, which I feel guilty about, but I WILL run my own personal Turkey Trot in the morning before we head out. It's going to be cold, but I'll do the best I can.

I think 2 out of 3 things I made today turned out well, and the third I messed up but hopefully it isn't too awful. Here's what I made. None of it is diet-friendly cause it's Thanksgiving. Duh. :P

This pumpkin cheesecake recipe is always great. Next time I'm going to try the Pioneer Woman pumpkin cheesecake, but I didn't have all the ingredients for it this time so I went with the same recipe as last year.

Here's what the cheesecake looked like as it went into the oven:



Here's a picture with the vanilla sour cream topping (the little flecks are vanilla beans).


I've never made a pecan pie, but I wanted to try it this year. I started out with this crust. The only thing I changed was I added some vodka. From what I understand, the vodka makes the crust easier to work with but it evaporates in the oven so the crust doesn't get soggy. It looked so pretty!

I used this recipe for the pecan filling. I did make a mistake, though. It called for one heaping cup of pecans. That didn't seem like anywhere near enough to me. I used well over 2 cups. That was too much, I think, because it boiled over which made the pie not look very good. :(

This is what it looked like going into the oven:

And this is what it looked like after the whole boiling over disaster (it looks worse in person):


I also made these honey yeast rolls. I've made many quick breads (pumpkin bread etc), but I've only made "real" bread with yeast once. They turned out ok but had ZERO flavor. It was like eating cardboard. These were much better! I had extras, which we ate with dinner tonight, and they were GOOD.

Making bread is a pain. I wouldn't say it's hard, but it just takes soooo long what with the rising and the second rising and all that nonsense. They were so good right out of the oven though, and I'm hoping they'll be good when they're re-heated before dinner tomorrow.

Here are the finished rolls: