Salted Caramel Pumpkin Blondies

Alternating layers of sweet pumpkin batter and rich salted caramel sauce bake up into the most succulent pumpkin blondies you'll ever want to eat. Pass these around for your Halloween party, or even Thanksgiving dessert! They are that special.

Some of you may have noticed that my recipes are a haphazard combination of measures. Sometimes by weight in grams or ounces, equally often cups and milliliters and other volume measures. My problem is that I have moved all over the world collecting cookbooks (and recipes from friends!) so I have gotten quite comfortable mixing and matching. I own two sets of measuring cups, US and UK, where a cup varies from eight ounces in the former to nine ounces in the latter. I don’t actually own a separate set of measuring spoons, but I know that an Australian recipe calling for a tablespoon of something needs four teaspoons instead of the US three. Thank goodness all teaspoons are 5ml!

I have a wonderful set of vintage scales, a gift from my mother, procured by a dear friend in Aberdeen, which has both imperial and metric weights. This is my very favorite thing in my kitchen and until I bought a digital scale, and I used it all the time.



When using my US cookbooks, I often measure things out, then tip them in the digital scale and write the weight in pencil in the cookbook, so I can just weigh the item the next time I use the recipe. How we ever started using cups, I do not know, because weighing is so much easier - and more accurate!

If you too find yourself with a foreign recipe, online or in a cookbook, check out Traditional Oven, the website I often use for conversions. It has been a godsend! But whichever measure you use, you'll want to make my salted caramel pumpkin blondies.

Salted Caramel Pumpkin Blondies

To give everybody credit: My recipe was adapted from this recipe from BakedBree.com which was in turn adapted from this recipe from SingForYourSupperBlog.com which was in turn adapted from a recipe for basic pumpkin blondies from Annies Eats, who adapted hers from Martha Stewart. And so it goes.

Ingredients
2 cups or 250g plain flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated or ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (245g) room temperature butter
1 1/4 cups or 250g brown sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract (Check out the link if you'd like to make your own.)
1 can (15 oz.) pumpkin (not pie filling)
1 cup store-bought caramel syrup with 1/2 teaspoon of sea salt added or this lovely recipe. I made this myself and ended up with a much darker caramel sauce.

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C. Combine all dry ingredients: flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda and salt in a large bowl.

Cream together the butter and brown sugar until very light and fluffy in another bowl.

Add the egg and vanilla extract to the butter and sugar.

Now beat in the canned pumpkin.

Finally, fold in the reserved flour mixture a few spoons at a time, and stop stirring when the batter is just combined. This is going to be really thick.

Line a 9×9 baking pan with parchment paper and spread half the batter around evenly.

Bake in your preheated oven for 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and pour the caramel sauce over the partially baked batter.

Carefully spoon the remaining batter over the caramel.

Spread to cover, as best you can. A gentle touch is key.

Return the blondies to the oven and bake for another 30 minutes. A toothpick should come out clean. Let the blondies cool before cutting.

Sprinkle with powdered sugar or drizzle on more salted caramel sauce before serving.

Enjoy!

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Slow Cooker Cheesy Chicken Enchilada Soup

This slow cooker cheesy chicken enchilada soup has all the wonderful flavors of your favorite enchilada dish in a warming bowl.

On a chilly fall night, this soup will warm your family right up, even if you don’t add extra hot sauce. I started the recipe by doubling my own homemade enchilada sauce, then I turned it into soup! It's full of chicken, beans, cheese and to enhance the flavor illusion of enchiladas, golden hominy. This is some of that good! Best of all, it’s made in a slow cooker so you just have to dump stuff in from time to time and it cooks itself.

Slow Cooker Cheesy Chicken Enchilada Soup 

Cheesy chicken enchilada soup would be a great dish to serve when the gang comes over to watch football. Just leave it in the slow cooker and so folks can help themselves. 

Ingredients
2 medium onions
2 (14 oz or 398g) cans crushed tomatoes
4 tablespoons dark chili powder
2 teaspoon ground cumin powder
1 teaspoon sea salt
6 medium chicken breasts about 1.65 lbs or 750g boneless chicken breast
140g cheddar and/or Monterey Jack cheeses
1 (14 oz or 398g) can black or pinto beans
1 (14 oz or 398g) can golden hominy (substitute corn if you can’t find hominy)
3 cups chicken stock
8 oz cream cheese
120g extra sharp cheddar

Optional, to serve:
Grated cheddar cheese
Sliced jalapeños
Hot sauce

Method
Chop your onions and puree them in your blender with one of the cans of tomatoes and all of the spices.

Put the mixture in the slow cooker along with the second can of tomatoes and one extra tomato can full of water.

Add the chicken breasts to the very thick soup, making sure they are submerged, and cook on high for three hours.

Remove the chicken and set aside to cool. When they are cool enough to handle, chop the breasts into bite-sized pieces and store them well-covered in the refrigerator.

Drain and rinse your beans and hominy. Add them to the slow cooker with the chicken stock. Cook another 2 hours on high.

Add in the cream cheese and cheddar cheese. Cook on low for 1 hour.

Add the chicken back in and cook on high for 30 minutes, or until the soup is warmed through.

Serve topped with more cheddar cheese, some sliced jalapeños and your favorite hot sauce to taste. Enjoy!

If you like this twist on enchiladas, you might want to try my cheesy corn beef taco muffins too.

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Barberry Pistachio Saffron Rice #FoodieExtravaganza

Elevate rice from plain to a bejeweled side dish with golden saffron, crimson barberries and bright green pistachios. Barberry Pistachio Saffron Rice is as pretty as it is tasty. If you have a rice cooker, it’s super simple as well.

One of the best things about moving to a new place is learning about the local food culture and discovering new ingredients. New to me five years ago were barberries, a featured staple in our neighbor-across-the-gulf, Iran.

Barberries are little sweet and sour jewels that add a lovely sharp flavor to many dishes in the Middle East. The population of Dubai is such a wonderful mix of nationalities and cultures that just about every ingredient known to man must be available here, if you just know where to look for it. I came across barberries for the first time during a foodie tour with Frying Pan Adventures. If you are ever in Dubai and want to see how the real people eat, never mind the fancy, shiny high-rise hotel restaurants, I highly recommend booking the Frying Pan Middle Eastern Food Pilgrimage.

The flavor of barberries reminds me of dried cranberries so if you can’t get them, chop up some cranberries instead. Ottolenghi suggests substituting dried currants soaked in lemon juice, but I know that currants are hard to come by in the United States. If you live in Australia or the UK (or somewhere else they are available) those would be a good option as well.

I’ve adapted this Barberry Pistachio Saffron Rice from two recipes. 1. from Ottolenghi.co.uk, which gives more explicit instructions for cooking the rice and 2.  from a community member of Nigella.com which says simply, “Cook rice in a rice steamer.” I chose to use my rice cooker so those instructions follow.

The amounts below should also work on the stovetop, in a heavy pan with a tight-fitting lid. My mom always says that the right amount of water is 1 cup for each cup of rice plus 1 cup for the pot. Or follow the instructions on your bag of rice.

Ingredients
For cooking the rice:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 1/2 cups or 275g long grained basmati rice, rinsed under cold water and drained well
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
2 1/2 cups or 600ml cold water

For the dish:
1/2 teaspoon good quality saffron threads
3/4 cup or 50g dried barberries
2 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoon olive oil, divided
1/2 cup or 75g whole unsalted, roughly chopped pistachios
1/4 teaspoon salt
Few good grinds fresh black pepper

Method
Pour 1 tablespoon of boiling water over the saffron and set it aside to steep for 30 minutes.

Put the barberries in a small bowl and pour enough boiling water to cover them along with a 1/2 teaspoon of sugar. Leave for 10-15 minutes, then drain.

Pour 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in your rice cooker then add the rice, stirring to make sure the grains are well coated.

Add the cold water and 1 teaspoon fine sea salt. Stir well. Put on the lid and set to “Cook” mode. When the rice cooker switches from cook to warm, set a timer for 10 minutes and cover the still closed pot with a couple of dry tea towels.

When the timer rings, open the lid and pour your soaked saffron with the golden water on one small portion of the rice. Cover again with the lid then tea towels while you prepare the rest of the dish.

In a large saucepan, add 1 tablespoon of olive oil and lightly toast the chopped pistachios along with the drained barberries over a medium heat. Add in the salt and a few good grinds of black pepper.

Use a spoon to remove the saffron colored section of the rice and fluff it up in a small bowl. Use a fork to fluff up the rest of the white rice.

Set aside a small amount of the barberries and pistachios to decorate the top, then add the rest to the rice pot, lightly folding them in till well combined. Then fold the saffron rice in lightly as well.

Spoon the rice into a serving dish then top with the reserved barberries and pistachios. Serve warm.

Enjoy!

Complete your meal by making my Persian Lamb Meatballs and Egyptian Date Crescents for dessert.

Barberry Pistachio Saffron Rice is my contribution to this month's Foodie Extravaganza where we are sharing recipes with nuts. Many thanks to our host is Caroline from Caroline's Cooking.

• Barberry Pistachio Saffron Rice by Food Lust People Love
• Canadian Pecan Butter Tarts by Tara's Multicultural Table
• Healthy Granola Cakes by Sneha's Recipes
• Pecan Chicken by Family Around The Table
• Pumpkin Nut Braid by Passion Kneaded
• Pumpkin-Nut Crumble Cake by Hardly A Goddess
• Pumpkin Praline Cheesecake by A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Walnut Sauce by Caroline's Cooking

Foodie Extravaganza celebrates obscure food holidays or shares recipes with the same ingredient or theme every month.

Posting day is always the first Wednesday of each month. If you are a blogger and would like to join our group and blog along with us, come join our Facebook group Foodie Extravaganza. We would love to have you!

If you're a reader looking for delicious recipes, check out our Foodie Extravaganza Pinterest Board!

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