Cheesy Pumpkin Scones #BreadBakers

Made with cheddar AND Parmesan, these cheesy pumpkin scones are tender inside and toasted golden outside, perfect for breakfast or afternoon tea. 

I’m not a big fan of pumpkin spice all the things like many people get excited for during this season but I do love actual pumpkin. In soup, pasta sauce, gnocchi, muffins and so much more. Big fan.

That’s why when our Bread Baker’s host for today’s event chose “pumpkin” for our theme, I was excited. I bought a beautiful little pumpkin and got ready to bake. 

Cheesy Pumpkin Scones

For my mashed pumpkin, I roasted wedges of pumpkin in their skins with just a light drizzle of olive oil until fork tender. Then I scooped the soft flesh out, mashed it and measured out one level cup. It weighed 255g. 

Ingredients

For the scones:

2 cups or 250g flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt 

1/4 teaspoon cayenne

1/2 cup or 113g cold unsalted butter, cut in little blocks

3 1/2 oz or 100g extra sharp cheddar cheese, coarsely grated

1 oz or 28g Parmesan, coarsely grated 

1 cup or 255g mashed pumpkin (see note above ingredients list)

Optional glaze:

1 tablespoon mashed pumpkin

1 tablespoon milk

Method

Preheat your oven to 425°F or 218°C and prepare a baking sheet lining it with baking parchment or a silicone mat.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, sugar, baking soda, salt and cayenne.

Use a pastry blender or a couple of knives to cut the butter into the flour. 

You want little lumps and flecks of butter still showing, not the homogenous sandy texture we want for pastry crust. 

Mix your two cheeses together and set aside a generous handful to use as topping. 

Toss the bigger pile of cheese with the flour mixture.

Add in the pumpkin. 

Fold and fold until the dough is just evenly moistened and holds together. It might look too dry at first, but the pumpkin should have enough moisture. If it truly doesn't, I shall roll my eyes at you but you can add a drizzle of water or milk.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface. 

Wet your hands and use them to shape the dough into a 3/4"or 1 cm thick square. The dough won't stick to damp hands. This avoids adding extra flour to the dough which can dry it out.

Cut the square into 9 pieces. As you can see, mine weren’t very even but I’m sure you’ll do better! 

Transfer the scones to your prepared baking pan. 

Mix together the mashed pumpkin and milk to make the glaze. 

Brush onto the scones. If you don’t have any leftover pumpkin, you can brush them with just milk.

Top with the reserved grated cheese.  

Bake in your preheated oven for 18-20 minutes or until puffed up and golden. Turn the baking pan around halfway through for even cooking. 

Serve warm, as is or with butter. These are so cheesy and delicious! We meant to share them with the neighbors but ended up eating them all. I made little ham sandwiches with the bigger ones. SO GOOD.

Enjoy! 

It’s the second Tuesday of the month so that means it’s time for my fellow Bread Bakers and I to share our bakes. Our host, Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm chose “pumpkin” as our theme. Check out all the links below. 

• Food Lust People Love: Cheesy Pumpkin Scones 
• A Day in the Life on the Farm: Sourdough Pumpkin Bread 
• Karen's Kitchen Stories: Sourdough Pumpkin Rolls 
• A Messy Kitchen: Pumpkin Hazelnut Babka
• Sneha's Recipe: Red Pumpkin Paratha

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

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Double Chocolate Guinness Muffins #MuffinMonday

The deep flavor of stout enhances the chocolate in these rich double chocolate Guinness muffins baked with cocoa and lots of semi-sweet chocolate chips.

I’ve been on a bit of a savory muffin kick lately but our younger daughter is here to visit so I decided I’d go sweet this month. I bought a 500ml bottle of Guinness Extra Stout for these muffins but also ended up using it for marinated chicken thighs and then the balance in a steak pie at her request. 

All three turned out beautifully and now I need to keep Guinness on hand all the time. You know, just in case. 

Double Chocolate Guinness Muffins

As mentioned above and indicated by the title, I used Guinness Extra Stout for this recipe but you can absolutely substitute your favorite stout. This recipe makes 12 regular sized muffins, chock full of chocolate chips. This recipe is adapted from one on Floating Kitchen.

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups or 219g all-purpose flour

3/4 cups or 150g golden caster sugar (Sub white if that's what you have)

1/4 cup or 20g cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

1/2 cup or 113g, butter, melted and cooled, plus extra for buttering pan, if needed

1/2 cup or 120ml Guinness stout beer

2 eggs

1 1/4 cups or 300g semi-sweet chocolate chips, divided

Method

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C. Line a 12-cup muffin pan with paper liners or brush with melted butter. (Or if you have silicone muffin cups, use them. I love mine which were a gift from my daughter.) Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt.

In another mixing bowl, whisk together the melted butter, Guinness and eggs until well combined.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold.

Set aside a generous handful of the chocolate chips to sprinkle on top then fold the rest into the batter. 

Divide the batter evenly between the 12 cups of your prepared muffin pan. Top with the reserved chocolate chips. 

Bake in your preheated oven for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. 

Allow the muffins to cool in their pan for about 10 minutes, then remove and transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.

Enjoy! 

It’s the last Monday of the month which means it’s Muffin Monday time! Check out all the lovely muffins my baker friends are sharing. 

• Banana Oreo Muffins from A Messy Kitchen
• Chunky Monkey Muffins from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Coconut Bran Muffins from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Double Chocolate Guinness Muffins from Food Lust People Love
• Pumpkin Snickerdoodle Muffins from Jolene's Recipe Journal

#MuffinMonday is a group of muffin loving bakers who get together once a month to bake muffins. You can see all of our lovely muffins by following our Pinterest board. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about Muffin Monday can be found on our home page. 

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Pepperoni Pizza Muffins #MuffinMonday

Just like a slice of pizza but in muffin form, these pepperoni pizza muffins are great for breakfast, brunch, lunch or snacking. 

Growing up, we didn’t have the ready option of take-out or pizza delivery or at least if we did, my mom didn’t take advantage of such a thing. If we wanted pizza, it meant going to a pizza parlor or baking it at home. 

Mom would use the Chef Boyardee pizza kit which included everything you needed, even a can of grated cheese to make a big rectangular pizza. Good memories, good times. 

Nowadays, whenever we make our fancy sourdough crust pizza at home, I think about how much I enjoyed that box kit pizza – special treat! - and how far we’ve come with options online and in the neighborhood to buy pizza. Despite those, homemade pizza is still the best! 

If you don’t have time for yeast dough though, these pepperoni pizza muffins will fill in beautifully.

Pepperoni Pizza Muffins

If you can’t find the julienne-cut sun-dried tomatoes, substitute the whole ones and slice them up! I found mine in the back of the pantry where they’d been languishing for a while. They darkened but still tasted good, so waste not want not but next time, once opened, I think I’ll pop them in the freezer to keep the color looking bright. 

Ingredients

1/2 oz or 14g sun-dried tomatoes, julienne cut

1 1/2 cups or 190g flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper

1/2 teaspoon Italian seasonings

3/4 cup or 180ml milk

1/4 cup or 60ml canola oil

1 egg

2/3 cup or 156ml pizza sauce, divide into 2, half for muffin batter and balance for topping

3 1/2 oz or 100g mozzarella, plus extra for topping, if desired

1 3/4 oz or 50g pepperoni, plus extra for topping, if desired

Method

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and generously grease your muffin tin or use paper liners.

Pour hot water over the sun-dried tomatoes to rehydrate them. Leave for 10 minutes, then drain well.

 

Cut your pepperoni into pieces and grate your cheese.  

In a large bowl, mix together your flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, crushed red pepper and dried oregano.

Add the cut pepperoni to the flour mixture and use your hands to toss and coat so you can separate the pieces of pepperoni. 

Do the same with the grated cheese and then the drained sun-dried tomatoes. 

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg, milk, and oil together.

Add your wet ingredients to your dry and mix just until it is just combined.

Gently fold in half of the pizza sauce. 

Spoon the batter into your prepared muffin tin.

Divide the remaining pizza sauce between the muffin cups.  

Top with one pepperoni each, then some cheese and a pinch of Italian seasonings. 

Bake in your preheated oven for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

 

Allow the muffins to cool for a few minutes then remove from the muffin pan and cool on a rack. 

Enjoy!

It’s the last Monday of the month so that means it’s time for my Muffin Monday friends to share muffin recipes! Check out the links below.

• Chocolate Zucchini Muffins from Jolene's Recipe Journal
• Gingered Lemon Poppyseed Muffins from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Mango Muffins from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Passion Fruit Poppy Seed Muffins from A Messy Kitchen
• Pepperoni Pizza Muffins from Food Lust People Love
• Sourdough Mango Pineapple Muffins from Zesty South Indian Kitchen

#MuffinMonday is a group of muffin loving bakers who get together once a month to bake muffins. You can see all of our lovely muffins by following our Pinterest board. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about Muffin Monday can be found on our home page. 

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Bacon Cheddar Spinach Waffles

These bacon cheddar spinach waffles are the perfect savory breakfast or dinner, plain, buttered, with syrup or even topped with a sunny-side up egg. 

Despite the savory nature of these waffles, we very much enjoyed them with Pearl Milling (formerly Aunt Jemima) butter lite pancake syrup, which our family prefers to real maple syrup. I know, I know, it’s sacrilege to those from maple producing areas, but the taste buds can’t be convinced otherwise. We ate these waffles as breakfast for dinner one evening and the sweet syrup with the savory waffles was perfection.

Then, the very next morning, I popped a couple of the leftover waffles in the toaster and fried a sunny-side up egg to top them with, along with a couple of pats of butter. The runny yolk ran into the buttered waffle holes in a glorious way! Another fabulous meal. Highly recommend, 10/10.  Grilled tomatoes optional but they did go nicely.

Bacon Cheddar Spinach Waffles

My frozen spinach is whole leaf so I chop it into smaller bits once thawed. If your frozen spinach is already chopped, you can skip that step. Do not skip the step of pressing out excess liquid once it’s thawed. No cheddar? Substitute your favorite semi-hard cheese. In my Belgian waffle maker, this batter makes 11 square waffles.  

Ingredients

3 1/2 oz or 100g frozen spinach, measured frozen, then thawed

1 3/4 cups or 220g flour

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon double-acting baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda or bicarbonate of soda

1⁄2 teaspoon salt

a few generous grinds of black pepper

3 1/2 oz or 100g mature (sharp) cheddar

3 1/2 oz or 100g real bacon crumbles

2 cups or 480ml buttermilk

1/3 cup or 80ml canola or other light oil, plus extra for greasing the waffle maker

2 eggs

Method

Squeeze any excess liquid out of your thawed spinach then chop it with a sharp knife. 

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients.

Grate your cheddar and add it along with the bacon crumbles to the dry mixture. Toss to coat.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, oil and eggs. Add in the chopped spinach and stir well to combine.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and fold until well combined. 

Preheat your waffle maker as per manufacturer’s instructions.

Using a pastry brush, grease your hot waffle maker with some canola or other light oil.

 

Pour batter into the center of the lower half of the waffle maker, being careful to leave room for when the batter spreads out as you lower the lid and also for when the waffle starts to rise when baking.

Close the lid and watch for the signal that your waffle is cooking. On my waffle maker, the light is red while it heats up. It goes green when it is ready for batter, red when it is cooking and then green again when the waffle is ready.  

I leave the waffles in just a little bit longer after the light turns green the second time so the waffles are nice and crispy.  But if you like them less crunchy, by all means take them out earlier.

Put the waffles single file on a pan in a warm oven to keep warm if you aren’t serving them to hungry hordes as soon as they are ready. 

Repeat the process until all the batter has become waffles. 

Serve them plain, buttered, with syrup or topped with an egg. Refrigerate any leftover waffles and rewarm them in your toaster or oven to serve. 

Enjoy! 

It’s Sunday FunDay and we are celebrating National Waffle Day which happens to be today! If you have a waffle maker, I suggest you do the same. Check out all of the links below.

• Apple Cinnamon Waffles from Mayuri's Jikoni
• Bacon Cheddar Spinach Waffles from Food Lust People Love
• Gingerbread Waffles from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Gluten Free Waffles with Poached Pears in Balsamic Reduction from Sid's Sea Palm Cooking
• Keto Spiced Omelette Waffles from Sneha's Recipe 
• Oatmeal Waffles from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Protein Waffles from Our Good Life
• Waffle Cupcakes from Amy's Cooking Adventures

 

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join.

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