In yesterday’s post I offhandedly mentioned that I made a pumpkin cranberry cake. I learned later that that was a really cruel thing to do. It made a certain reader about die of dehydration by drooling. Naughty me.

Even before I received the desperate plea for the recipe, I was already working on yet another cranberry pumpkin cake recipe. Both cakes were good, but the second one was better—it’s a combination of Julie’s recipe and one I found in the local paper (that they, in turn, got from Epicurious).

It goes like this:

1. Roast a giant butternut squash or pumpkin, or simply toss a couple cans of pumpkin puree in the cart the next time you go shopping.

2. Mix up a pumpkin cake batter.

3. Enhance the pumpkin cake batter with a cup of chopped, frozen cranberries. Fresh, not dried.

4. In a separate bowl, make the cream cheese filling.

5. In cupcake-lined muffin tins, put a dollop of cake batter. Add a dollop of cream cheese filling. Put another dollop of cake batter and smooth it out so most of the cream cheese filling is covered. Dollop, dollop, dollop.

7. Sprinkle the muffins with demerara sugar.

8. Bake and eat. And eat and eat and eat.

Julie says these muffins are better than Starbucks. I’ve never had a Starbucks pumpkin muffin, but I’ll take her word for it.

Pumpkin Cranberry Muffins
Adapted from Dinner with Julie and Epicurious

These muffins would be fine without the cream cheese filling. And in that case, I bet they’d be good iced with a cream cheese and pecan frosting.

If you have a couple oranges hanging about on the premises, think about adding the zest to the batter. Just a thought…

This recipe makes about 18 muffins. I made 12, plus two loaf minis. If you’d rather not deal with the muffin hassle, make a sheet cake a la the earthquake cake method.

For the cake batter:
1 14-ounce can (about 1 3/4 cups) pumpkin puree
1 cup sugar
1 cup canola oil
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 tablespoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
pinch allspice
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup frozen fresh cranberries, chopped
demerara sugar, for topping, optional

Beat together the pumpkin, sugar, oil, egg, and vanilla. Add the remaining ingredients and mix well. Stir in the cranberries.

For the cream cheese filling:
6 ounces cream cheese
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons flour
pinch of salt
½ teaspoon vanilla

Beat ingredients together till creamy smooth.

To assemble:
Fill lined muffin tins one third of the way full with the cake batter. Top with a dollop of cream cheese filling. Top with another dollop of cake batter and smooth over the top, trying to cover most of the filling. Sprinkle with demerara sugar.

Bake the muffins at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until brown and set. Eat warm or at room temperature. If eating within a couple days, store at room temperature. If waiting longer than that, wrap and freeze.

This same time, years previous: let me sum up: the pie party!, lessons from West Virginia, brown sugar icing, no zip, sausage quiche with potato crust

I turned in my final Kitchen Chronicles column, a few hours ahead of schedule even. (Though later I realized that a recipe for cooking beans probably didn’t count as an actual recipe but by then I didn’t care, and anyways, I think a bowl of boiled, salty beans is a full meal, no enhancements required, and that means it’s a recipe, right?)

I voted. The kids and I crowded around the little booth over in the corner of the hall, each of them pushing to get a clear shot of me scritch-scratching my vote in with the black sharpie. And just like last time, I wished I had thought to bring my camera so someone (not sure who) could’ve captured a picture of our ten bodiless legs.

I dropped off the kids at a friend’s house and then spent the next four hours eating bagels and scones, drinking coffee, writing/tweeting/editing/blogging, and constantly refreshing my cousin-in-law’s blog post on voting in order to stay on top of all the fascinating comments.

I ran some errands and made my first purchase for our new house: a few boxes of white twinkly lights to fend off the wet, cold, gray weather of the highlands. I plan on taking votive candles, too.

I picked up the kids and took them El Chipotle for supper. My little sister (through the Big Brother Big Sister program), who is all done growed up and has two kids of her own and a job at Chipotle, gave me a coupon to there for a party of five. We sat at a round metal table (and now I wish I had a round stainless steel metal table in my house) and stuffed our faces and didn’t fight. It was nice.

We went to the library and stocked up.

Back home, the kids did their hands, feet, and faces while my husband and I unpacked the car, straightened the house, and I posted the following on Facebook:

My husband: Do you guys know what the electoral college is?


My son: (not wanting to have the discussion) Yeah.


My husband: Okay, then what is it?


My son: It’s the place where you go to learn how to vote.


So now we’re having a bedtime civics lesson. #electionday

We cozied up the fire and jumped right into our new read aloud, Over Sea, Under Stone. The two younger children fell asleep before I even finished the first chapter.

The kids in bed, my husband snuggled up on the sofa in front of the computer. We interspersed our obsessive Huffington Post Live watching with episodes from Once Upon a Time and Parenthood. I made hot chocolate and scarfed some Halloween candy. For the nerves, you know.

This morning, the kids got yet another civics lesson when we crowded around the kitchen table to watch the speeches that my husband and I had been too tired to stay up for. And then my husband went to work and the kids and I moved on to Spanish, reading, and math lessons, making jewelry, reading library books, and baking a pumpkin cranberry cake.

But that is all today and I was supposed to be talking about yesterday, so I guess I better stop now.

P.S. For those of you beleaguered by the election season: here is a picture of neighboring houses in our town. We are friends with both families, though we know the ones on the left—both figuratively and literally—better. I first saw the sign on my way on our way to church on Sunday and it totally made my day. I couldn’t stop smiling. (It’s going on seven thousand shares, so clearly I’m not the only one smiling.)

This past weekend I made beirocks.

I hadn’t made beirocks for a really long time. In fact, maybe I never made them before. I don’t know.

I’ve known about them forever, though. And I’ve eaten them at friends’ houses. And I’ve read about them on blogs. But it just never crossed my mind to actually make them myself. That is, not until you all suggested I make them for my lactose-intolerant husband’s lunches.

And then I was like, Duh, these would be perfect!

They’re not hard to make. Just fry up some beef and cabbage, make a batch of five-minute bread dough, roll the meat up into the dough (kind of), and bake.

The kids were thrilled. They call them meat rolls and ate them warm, dipped in ketchup and/or mustard. I ate mine dipped in curry ketchup. So, so good.

Beirocks
Adapted from the More-With-Less Cookbook by Doris Janzen Longacre

Next time I’ll add one grated carrot along with the cabbage, just for color.

Also, they are pronounced “beer-rocks,” more or less.

2 pounds ground beef
1 large onion, chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
a pinch of hot pepper flakes
some generous squirts of hot sauce (I used Sriracha)
3 cups thinly chopped cabbage
1 recipe of five-minute bread
more olive oil, for the baking pan
cornmeal, for the baking pan
1 egg, beaten, and mixed with 1 tablespoon cold water, for wash, optional

Fry the ground beef and onion in the olive oil over medium-high heat until cooked through. Add the salt, pepper, hot sauce, and cabbage. Stir thoroughly, reduce the heat to low, put a lid on the pan and cook for about 20 more minutes, stirring occasionally, until the cabbage is tender. Add more seasoning, if desired, and set aside.

On a well-floured workspace, roll out the dough as thinly as possible. Cut into squares, about 4 inches by 4 inches. Put several tablespoons of meat filling into the center of each piece of dough and pinch the corners together to close.

Place buns, seam-side down, on an oiled, cornmeal-sprinkled baking sheet. Brush the tops and sides of each roll with the egg wash. Let rise (I didn’t bother to cover them) for about 15 minutes. Bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes until golden brown.

Serve warm or at room temp with ketchup or mustard for dipping. Freeze leftovers.

Yield: about 20-30 buns.

P.S. I totally forgot to put up and link to my last Kitchen Chronicles column! It’s a previously posted recipe, so the pressure to share wasn’t there, I guess.

This same time, years previous: crispy cinnamon cookies,  homeschoolers have it tough