Pumpkin

Every fall I become obsessed with pumpkin. Pumpkin picking, pumpkin carving, pumpkin spice lattes from Starbucks, pumpkin cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory and baking with pumpkin. There is nothing better on a cool fall day than a Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks

I had to stop into The Cheesecake Factory the other night to get a piece of their pumpkin cheesecake. It's to die for!

Sunday my sister hosted a pumpkin carving party/lunch. Jason and I had a great time helping Millie and Merrill carve their pumpkins and creating our own pumpkin masterpieces:) Can you tell we were still super pumped about Mizzou's big win on Saturday night?!

A ghost, MIZ-ZOU, and M for Millie :)


Lunch was also pumpkin themed. My sister and Scott made a delicious pumpkin soup, I made pumpkin raisin oat muffins - hearty and healthy - and Mary and Brandon brought pumpkin coffee. It was a pumpkin feast!


Sunday afternoon I was in the mood to bake again and had some leftover pumpkin from the muffins that I needed to use. I gave Jason a few choices and he requested these Pumpkin Cranberry cookies that I made last year. This time I decided to add chocolate chips and they took these cookies from really good to amazing! Jason bit into one and I believe his words were "Holy crap that's delicious!". I'll take that as a compliment ;) The chocolate chips added just enough sweetness and balanced out the tartness of the cranberries. In my opinion everything is better with chocolate :) They are incredibly delicious and a must try if you like pumpkin!

I have a feeling these won't last long!

Another pumpkin recipe I tried out recently was Pumpkin Spice Pancakes with Pumpkin Butter from Skinnytaste.com, a great site with low fat receipes complete with Weight Watchers points. My mom bought me a jar of pumpkin butter from a local farm so this was a no brainer! They tasted great and are super healthy!

I have two more cans of pumpkin in my pantry and a couple more recipes I'm dying to try out. Hopefully Jason isn't sick of pumpkin yet!