T-giving Rehash

Yayyyy the semester is almost over save for two more exams! I didn't realize how quickly time had passed since Thanksgiving while I was in the middle of all my end of the semester stuff, so my overview of all the baking I did is kind of late...obviously.

I had the grand idea to make some apple cider caramels from a recipe I found over on Sugarpunk's site. They started out well, but since I have very little experience with candy-making, I'm thinking I might have over cooked it since it never set up. It did, however, make a nice bottom layer/topping for the pumpkin cheesecake I made. This one had a gingersnap crust that was really tasty. I don't think it lasted longer than about 2 days in my house, so it was a hit.



I also decided to make some Pumpkin Challah from Martha Stewart's recipe. Like every other challah recipe I've used, this makes a crap-ton of bread. I envisioned these rolls as sort of post-thanksgiving sandwich bread, but I failed to think about how big they'd be by the time they were done baking.

Other than the obvious ugliness here, the dough was really easy to work with, except I can only braid going one direction and starting from the middle throws me off in a big way.

Like I said, there was so much of this bread. I think I made french toast for everyone at least twice. It wasn't overly pumpkiny, which I think is a good thing since it could go savory or sweet.


I did actually bake the Two-fer Pie the day after Thanksgiving, but due to a misplacement of my camera connector cord, I have only just gotten all of these pictures onto my computer. Alas. Anyway, the dough was way easy to make, but it seemed like 25 plus 8 minutes was a long time to prebake. Mine, as seen in the middle pic below, got kind of crispy at the end of that time.

The filling was also...filling. I managed to get most of it into the pie and there were only a couple spots where I could tell that it had run over and made the crust stick to the pie pan a little.


Overall, I think the pie turned out pretty well. I like the addition of rum in the pumpkin at the beginning, but it got stronger over time which I liked less. I think that, while this pie is tasty, it is too much of a hassle to make any more than maybe once a year.