Sunday, October 31, 2004

Happy Halloween!


Pumpkin Muffin

Some Halloween-related events are scheduled for this weekend in this town. The one I joined last night was a big costume & dance party :) From 11:30 pm to 3:00am, I kept chatting and dancing! (Details here.) I slept in this morning and now I’m craving for miso soup….(Miso is said to be a good alkalizing food which is good for you when you have a hangover.)

Anyway, I felt the urge to make something using pumpkin this weekend to celebrate Halloween. As you can probably imagine, I’m a bit tired of pies recently, so pumpkin pie was not my choice. Instead, I baked some cute Pumpkin muffins yesterday.

The recipe is from my favorite muffin book, ” Itsudemo Muffin – Muffins & Quick Breads” by Asa Shiokawa. This is a real nice book. What’s so nice about the book is not only the recipes included but also the PHOTOS!! The photos of muffins/quick breads in this book look so nice with a great effect of the natural sunlight and shade. Oh how I long to be able to take photos like them and post to my foodblog!!

Now, this is the kind of pumpkin we have here:

Kabocha


It tastes very sweet and its flesh is (almost like sweet potatoes or chestnuts) not as moist as the pumpkins you usually use for pumpkin pie, I guess. This kabocha is very good for this type of pumpkin muffins, because about 2/3 of the pumpkin called for in the recipe is not pureed but added to the batter as pumpkin chunks. And the chunks give a little snap of pumpkin flavor, which goes really well with the salty pumpkin seeds on top.

See the orange-colored pumpkin chunks inside?

The recipe says the muffins would be good with cinnamon butter, too.
I’m usually a coffee drinker, but today, with these muffins, I felt like having hot cocoa.



So, Happy Halloween!!!

13 comments:

ting-aling said...

Wow, very creative.

ting-aling said...

We call them kalabasa in the Philippines.

Ziz said...

Very cute!!! :D

obachan said...

> ting-aling --- Thanks! I had fun drawing and cutting out those pumpkin faces :) Kalabasa and Kabocha…. Interesting. They sound somewhat similar, don’t they?
> Alicat --- Thanks again. Cute? I thought I made them look scary....

Ziz said...

Whoops... I meant scary scary scary. :P

JMom said...

Hi Obachan, Happy Halloween, belatedly. You sure have been doing a lot of cooking! I am just catching up on my bloghopping while I'm at work (sshh)since I've been out of circulation for a few days now. I'm going to have to try your pear pie and orange tart recipes. They look delicious. I made basil pesto over the summer too, to use up my fresh basil. I couldn't get my girls to like the green pasta though :( Oh well, more for me.

obachan said...

> alicat --- :D
> JMom --- OK. I won’t tell your boss about your bloghopping. ;)
I wasn’t too crazy about the sour cream pear pie …. I was pretty happy when the last piece was finally gone. Making basil paste is always fun, but my neighbors may not be happy when I do that. The walls are so thin in this apartment and they have to hear me singing while making the paste (this time, “Bed of Roses” by Bon Jovi.) :P

Unknown said...

scary jack-o-lanterns on yummy muffins..sounds like a treat for kids and kids-at-heart. Thanks for the tip on the other benefits of miso soup. must remember next "overimbibing" time.

Evil Jonny said...

Kawai'iiiii!

obachan said...

uh... You're supposed to be scared, Jonny.

obachan said...

> drstl --- It's too bad that kids don’t do trick-or-treating around here. I made too many muffins and really wanted to share them with kids.

Tatsuo Tabata said...

Too many muffins? I could help you eat them if I lived near you! --Tatsu

obachan said...

Well, thanks anyway.