Blogtober

Taste of Autumn

12:56:00 PM


It's actually October, can you believe it? We only have 2 more months left of 2015. What a year.
With October, comes crisp weather, colorful leaves and pumpkin.everything.
I went home a few weeks ago, mostly to celebrate my dads birthday and also get away from my roommates crazy sleeping schedule. The drive from Uni to my hometown isn't very long and I was very excited to use my mom and step-dads new oven!
We were making Pumpkin Cookies! These are always a family favorite this time of year, and they're delicious to eat!
Pumpkin Cookies

Here's what you'll need:

Two bowls
A mixer
2.5 cupes all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1.5 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup butter (softened) 
1 cup Pumpkin puree
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Frosting (you can use vanilla or cream cheese frosting) 

Directions:
Preheat Oven to 350* Fahrenheit, (176 Celsius)
Combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in one of your bowls
Beat sugar and butter in your other bowl until well blended, beat in pumpkin, egg and vanilla until smooth.
Add in dry ingredients
Ingredients

Line baking sheets with parchment paper (or you can grease them, I prefer parchment paper because it's less of a mess to clean up after! )
Drop dough in tablespoon amounts and gently press down just a bit.
They don't spread too much!
Bake cookies for 15-18 minutes. I did mine for 15 and they were perfectly moist! 
Autumn food
Now you've got naked pumpkin cookies! ( I had actually not pressed mine down as much but they still turned out nicely!)
Here comes the fun part.
With whatever frosting you've decided to use, spread just a bit over the tops of the cookies
Cookie

How beautiful, right?

Letting the cookies sit for a bit actually helped in bringing out the pumpkin flavor, and as difficult as it is not not actually eat them fresh out of the oven, it's worth the wait!
I hope you give this recipe a try! I cannot wait until Christmas to bake more holiday cookies! If you have any recipes you think I should try out, leave them for me in the comments! If you do try these out make sure to take a photo and send it to me! 

What is your favorite fall food? I hope the weather hasn't cooled down too much for you! 
Have a great rest of your weeks! 
xx
Kenzie








Bacon

Birthday Treats

10:30:00 AM


If you aren't following me on Instagram or Twitter, you may not have noticed that the sixth of September was my birthday! Being Labor Day weekend, meant having my birthday on a four day weekend. There are 3 birthdays right in a row in August, and it was also a good reason to celebrate them as well.
 My Grandparents picked me up from University on Friday and we drove over to Minneapolis for the festivities. Friday night was more of a laid back, wait for everyone else to arrive, night. You may remember my post last summer about the Great Minnesota Get Together, also known as the Minnesota State Fair, which we all attended this year as well! Here are some of the delicious foods that we tried this year!

This wasn't the first one we tried, it was actually the Gizmo, like last year and you can read about that and the other foods on the post I just linked! 
The photo above is actually Chicken Fried Bacon. It was quite tasty, though more chicken flavor than bacon and with maple dipping sauce (which I personally didn't care for as much.) But wow. 


Here they're making taffy. Like sea salt taffy...I was kind of in awe watching the machine flip the stuff around. 
The fair this year had listed many of its new food items and those were mostly on our "must try" list! This one was Salted Caramel Puff Ice Cream. It was pretty delicious, definitely something anyone could make at home I suppose. Just have vanilla ice cream, caramel sauce, and puff corn! 

Being Labor Day weekend, many people have off and therefore...this crowd all had the same idea of going to the fair! 

The baby animal barn is always my favorite part, this little lamb on the left was sleeping in its caretakers lap, with its head in her hand. TOO cute! We also wandered through the horse barns and saw these guys there as well as horses with sparkles on their rear ends. 


The next foods we tried out were a macaroni cup cake, which my sister took an immediate liking to. Not being a fan of macaroni, I wasn't too thrilled, but I did enjoy the deep fried oreos! 

The Italian Desert Nachos were probably my favorite things I got. Though a bit pricey, customers could get any variety they wanted! I chose white chocolate, almonds, strawberries and whipped cream for mine and it was incredible. It was very filling and I was glad it was the last thing I ate! 
I also had cinnamon flavored almonds as a snack. And of course I got shaved ice and chose Watermelon as this years flavor. 
It was a great start to my birthday weekend!! 


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