Simple Recipes and Common Sense: Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

Hello Nomsters,

Happy Thanksgiving break! Of course I'm sure most of you are making the journey home or to some other location to celebrate one of the biggest foodie holidays! As we all await either the traditional turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, veggies (the list goes on!) or we get ready to enjoy a tasty dinner out, I figured I would provide you with a new twist on the typical Thanksgiving dessert. Now, this by no means needs to replace pumpkin, sweet potato, or pecan pie, but they are a nice accompaniment to any Thanksgiving food fest!

As promised, I have provided a recipe for Pumpkin Whoopie Pies (with Cream Cheese Frosting) at the end of this post. I made these tasty treats for the first time last week to test them out on some friends at a Thanksgiving party and boy, they did not disappoint! The cake part is a bit moist, but I solved that problem by putting then in the fridge for a bit after assembling them

Pumpkin Spice Cake:
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted
1 cup brown sugar (light or dark brown works)
2 large eggs at room temperature
1 cup canned pumpkin puree (if you don't have enough pumpkin, you can use banana as a nice twist, it gives the cake a nice dimension)
2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. salt
1 and 2/3 cup all purpose flour

-Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. 
-Melt the butter in the microwave for about 30 seconds, make sure to check on it in 10sec intervals in order to avoid burnt butter,
-Sift dry ingredients together and set aside. Beat butter and sugar until smooth. Add eggs, pumpkin, vanilla and mix well. Add the dry ingredients to the pumpkin mixture and mix just until combined.
-Drop in similar sized spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet and bake for about 8-12mins, until they look and feel like spongy cookies.
-Let them completely cool down before attempting to assemble them.


Cream Cheese Frosting:
1/2 stick of butter (softened)
1 8ox package of cream cheese (softened)
1 box of confectioners (powdered) sugar
1 tsp vanilla

(if you have a mixer)
-Cream butter and cream cheese together,
-Add vanilla and mix on low,
-Gradually add confectioner's sugar, making sure to scrape down the sides

(without mixer, prepare to work those wrists)
-Cream butter and cream cheese together with a fork or wooden spoon (this will take a while, so really wait for those ingredients to soften)
-Add vanilla and mix well,
-Add the confectioner's sugar and make sure to mix it really well until it reaches a smooth consistency.

Assembly:
-Take one pumpkin cookie, spoon cream cheese frosting and spread thickly over the surface, add the other half and gently squeeze so that the icing pops out just a little!

Happy Thanksgiving!

-gf

NN Update: Falling into Seasonal Favorites

Hello Nomsters!

I hope everyone on Georgetown's campus is enjoying their Thursday night and are getting ready to relax over the lovely three day weekend! I've returned home to Chicago for the break, but I promised a post about the latest tastes that Nightly Noms has been baking up, so here we go!

With the leaves turning and the fall breeze stirring, we've decided to "spice" up our weekly delivery menu a bit. Two weeks ago we offered Chewy Gingersnap cookies and Pumpkin Brown Sugar Muffins (aka Pumpkin Spice). Both items were a hit and we hope that if you have a moment you'll take a bit of time to leave a comment/review either on this blog or at nightlynoms@gmail.com.

Our gingersnaps are a chewy combination of spicy and sweet goodness that is sure to give you a pick me up after a few hours studying in Lau!

The Pumpkin Brown Sugar Muffins we baked up were a moist mix of pumpkin and cinnamon with a sweet brown sugar coating on top. Maybe you aren't craving pumpkin pie yet, but these muffins are definitely a tasty addition to a Pumpkin Spice Latte or cup of coffee!






And finally, for this past week's delivery Nightly Noms baked up our well-known Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins and our latest seasonal addition: Pumpkin Snickerdoodles. Regardless of being a baker, foodie, eater, or just random enjoyer of baked goods, Snickerdoodles are a fun cookie because of the name itself, not to mention the overall taste of warm, chewy, cinnamon-sugar covered Snickerdoodles is delicious. Adding pumpkin to the mix seemed like a fun alteration and ended up making more than one person say "nom nom."


Anywho, I hope you've enjoyed this quick update on the NN menu, we'll likely be offering these new Noms well into the month of November, along with adding others that we've been tweaking on in the test kitchen and of course the usual favorites!

Remember, we're here to improve your "foodie experience," so feel free to email us requests and questions. And while you're procrastinating on Facebook, we'd really really appreciate if you'd invite your friends to "like" us.

All the best and Happy Baking!

-The Georgetown Foodie