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Figure 1. You have to taste it to believe it.
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Introduction
What do you do with half a can of pumpkin purée? After making Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls, we had half a can left, and spent about a week trying to figure out what to do with it. Pumpkin muffins? Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies? Pumpkin bread? Pumpkin pie? Sure they all sound good, but we wanted to do something different. With the help of a friend, we realized we could throw together a simple and sugary recipe for pumpkin cake pops by combining a few other recipes (Eissa 2012).
Cake pops are a great dessert option because they're small. In other words, they naturally lend themselves to a serving size. You can have a few sweet bites without feeling like you ate an entire cake. Be warned though: these are so delicious that you might eat many of them in one sitting, thus negating this idea. But at least you'll enjoy your dessert!
Difficulty: This recipe deserved a middle-range ranking for difficulty because although it is not complicated to assemble, it has sub-recipes that you need to keep track of and time. You have to remember to make the frosting while the cake is cooking, and later you have to remember to prepare the cinnamon-sugar mix. It's not difficult, but it requires some attention. Perhaps making a timeline (Fig. 8) can help.
What do you do with half a can of pumpkin purée? After making Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls, we had half a can left, and spent about a week trying to figure out what to do with it. Pumpkin muffins? Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies? Pumpkin bread? Pumpkin pie? Sure they all sound good, but we wanted to do something different. With the help of a friend, we realized we could throw together a simple and sugary recipe for pumpkin cake pops by combining a few other recipes (Eissa 2012).
Cake pops are a great dessert option because they're small. In other words, they naturally lend themselves to a serving size. You can have a few sweet bites without feeling like you ate an entire cake. Be warned though: these are so delicious that you might eat many of them in one sitting, thus negating this idea. But at least you'll enjoy your dessert!
Explanation of our rankings (Fig. 2)
Prep Time: To be fair, half of the time this recipe requires is the time to cook the pumpkin bread. You don't actually have two entire hours of work, but you do need to reserve a two-hour time frame.
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| Figure 2. Our NFPA-PCP Ranking |
Course: We've said it before, is there a wrong time to eat sugar? Obviously not. Still, these would be best as a dessert unless you're a student and tend to eat things like this for a meal. In that case, we've listed these as a midnight snack for the late-night studiers.
Materials
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Figure 3. Mixing everything (See Procedure)
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2) Sugar - 1.67 cups (1 and 2/3)
3) Vegetable Oil - 0.67 cups (2/3)
4) Vanilla Extract - 2 teaspoons
5) Eggs - 4
6) Flour - 3 cups
9) Baking soda - 2 teaspoons
10) Salt - 1 teaspoon
11) Ground cinnamon - 1 teaspoon
12) Baking powder - 0.5 teaspoons
Procedure
Pumpkin Bread
1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease or butter a baking pan. They suggested a few pan dimensions, but we just used whatever we had, and it was fine.
2) Stir all of those ingredients (yes, everything) together in a mixing bowl. Mix and pour the mixture into your pan.
3) Bake for different amounts of time depending on your pan dimensions. We used a pie tin and baked the bread for 50 minutes. Just test it with a fork or toothpick to see if it's done.
4) Let the bread cool enough so it doesn't hurt your hands to touch.
Frosting
1. Mix all the frosting ingredients together until it looks like frosting.
Cake Pop Dough
3) Scoop the frosting onto the pumpkin bread pieces. Mix the frosting into the bread with your hands.
4) With your hands, form the cake pop dough into balls with a diameter of about 3 cm.
5) Put some cinnamon and some white sugar into a bowl. Roll each pumpkin cake pop (one at a time) in the cinnamon-sugar bowl, and make sure you coat the whole surface. Stop: It's time to do a taste test!
6) Pack up some pumpkin cake pops and stroll over to your neurofiesta!
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| Figure 4. Pumpkin bread. Mmm...but wait, we're not done! |
1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease or butter a baking pan. They suggested a few pan dimensions, but we just used whatever we had, and it was fine.
2) Stir all of those ingredients (yes, everything) together in a mixing bowl. Mix and pour the mixture into your pan.
3) Bake for different amounts of time depending on your pan dimensions. We used a pie tin and baked the bread for 50 minutes. Just test it with a fork or toothpick to see if it's done.
4) Let the bread cool enough so it doesn't hurt your hands to touch.
Frosting
1. Mix all the frosting ingredients together until it looks like frosting.
Cake Pop Dough
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Figure 5. Cake Pops (not falafel) pre-dusting.
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1) Remove two slices of pumpkin bread. Set aside for tasting!
2) Dump the rest of the pumpkin bread into a mixing bowl and cut it into very small pieces.
3) Scoop the frosting onto the pumpkin bread pieces. Mix the frosting into the bread with your hands.
4) With your hands, form the cake pop dough into balls with a diameter of about 3 cm.
5) Put some cinnamon and some white sugar into a bowl. Roll each pumpkin cake pop (one at a time) in the cinnamon-sugar bowl, and make sure you coat the whole surface. Stop: It's time to do a taste test!
6) Pack up some pumpkin cake pops and stroll over to your neurofiesta!
Results
Sugar! Whoa! Serious amounts of sugar! It's okay though because this recipe is delicious. Of the 6 people who tried these, all six liked them. Success!
As usual, we changed our ingredient list a bit. All ingredients were purchased at Treasure Island (Where else would we go?). We left out some ingredients (raisins, chopped nuts, and cloves) because we either didn't like them or didn't feel like buying them. For the pumpkin bread, we halved each ingredient because we only had half of a can of pumpkin puree. The only ingredient of which we accidentally included the full amount was vanilla, but it didn't seem to matter.
One thing we were concerned about was the pumpkin bread:frosting ratio. We didn't know how much frosting we would need, so we simply made the same amount as we used for the PCRs last week.
Sugar! Whoa! Serious amounts of sugar! It's okay though because this recipe is delicious. Of the 6 people who tried these, all six liked them. Success!
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Figure 6. One finished pumpkin cake pop in a bowl of
cinnamon and sugar.
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As usual, we changed our ingredient list a bit. All ingredients were purchased at Treasure Island (Where else would we go?). We left out some ingredients (raisins, chopped nuts, and cloves) because we either didn't like them or didn't feel like buying them. For the pumpkin bread, we halved each ingredient because we only had half of a can of pumpkin puree. The only ingredient of which we accidentally included the full amount was vanilla, but it didn't seem to matter.
One thing we were concerned about was the pumpkin bread:frosting ratio. We didn't know how much frosting we would need, so we simply made the same amount as we used for the PCRs last week.
Discussion
If you don't want all of that sugar, the pumpkin bread itself should be enough to satisfy your craving for a fanciful dessert. However, to be honest, adding that extra dollop of frosting is really the way to go. Don't panic when the frosty orbs of pumpkin bread and glaze come out looking like falafel. They will taste like best doughnut holes you ever had, with a consistency that is worthy of adjectives that do not yet exist. Gooey and squishy do not come close to accurately describing the nature of these amazing treats.
Perhaps the reason these PCPs are so purely wonderful is that they are truly meant to fill the insides of a layered, more textured dessert. We took a shortcut and made the inside of the fruit while avoiding the peel. In general, cake pops are covered in a hardened chocolate/candy coating, but we just made the soft inside. You can also go the chocolate-nut route, à la frozen bananas.
Have you ever wondered what the a molecule of glucose looks like? Check it out! Most sugars (e.g. lactose [found in milk], fructose [found in fruits and vegetables], and ribose [found in your DNA]) look like this, except they all have a different arrangement of OH's, and some are shaped like pentagons instead of hexagons.
Most cells store the glucose you consume until it's needed for conversion into usable energy through glycolysis, the Krebs cycle, and/or oxidative phosphorylation. However, neurons cannot store glucose, therefore they need a constant supply of it from the blood stream. Not only does glucose supply energy to your neurons, but it also enhances memory storage. In other words, this is brain food! Ok, so maybe that's an oversimplification. But still, these PCPs are too delicious to pass up.
Future Directions
Coming Next: Salmon Sushi (We needed to make something with a bit less sugar. Try our dessert recipes; you'll understand.)
References
1) Crocker, B. 2012. "Pumpkin Bread." bettycrocker.com.
2) Eissa, T. 2012. Advice on combining pumpkin bread and frosting.
2) Perelman, D. 2012. "Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls." smittenkitchen.com (for the frosting).
If you don't want all of that sugar, the pumpkin bread itself should be enough to satisfy your craving for a fanciful dessert. However, to be honest, adding that extra dollop of frosting is really the way to go. Don't panic when the frosty orbs of pumpkin bread and glaze come out looking like falafel. They will taste like best doughnut holes you ever had, with a consistency that is worthy of adjectives that do not yet exist. Gooey and squishy do not come close to accurately describing the nature of these amazing treats.
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Figure 7. D-Glucose. The corners, except for the
oxygen on the top right, are carbon atoms
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Have you ever wondered what the a molecule of glucose looks like? Check it out! Most sugars (e.g. lactose [found in milk], fructose [found in fruits and vegetables], and ribose [found in your DNA]) look like this, except they all have a different arrangement of OH's, and some are shaped like pentagons instead of hexagons.
Most cells store the glucose you consume until it's needed for conversion into usable energy through glycolysis, the Krebs cycle, and/or oxidative phosphorylation. However, neurons cannot store glucose, therefore they need a constant supply of it from the blood stream. Not only does glucose supply energy to your neurons, but it also enhances memory storage. In other words, this is brain food! Ok, so maybe that's an oversimplification. But still, these PCPs are too delicious to pass up.
Future Directions
Coming Next: Salmon Sushi (We needed to make something with a bit less sugar. Try our dessert recipes; you'll understand.)
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Figure 8. Cooking timeline.
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1) Crocker, B. 2012. "Pumpkin Bread." bettycrocker.com.
2) Eissa, T. 2012. Advice on combining pumpkin bread and frosting.
2) Perelman, D. 2012. "Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls." smittenkitchen.com (for the frosting).
I am a reference!!!
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