A "CHUNK" OF CARROTS

Ah, September in Connecticut! It's 90, it's 60, it's rainy, its sunny, its windy, its 90 again! People all over are sweating to death in a sweater choice that seemed perfect for the morning temps, and then freezing to death at night when the window is left open because "it was so warm all day". Well, I for one have decided to give mother nature the big %!@& you! I started all my favorite fall activities and am going to keep on doing them 90 degrees or 20!

Michael loves to go apple picking and starts begging to go the minute the grocery stores turn from nectarines to apples. We headed over to Roger's Orchard and started our apple picking season. They only had two apples to choose from, Mac's and some type that tasted like a bad tomato. Michael spent over an hour taste testing Mac's and tossing the "bad apples" while shouting "play ball". After purchasing 3 cups of cider at .50 a pop and a dozen apple cider donuts that Nello will inevitably eat on the ride home, we hit the road. Now, what to do with a giant bag of apples??? Caramel apple cupcakes, that's what! The cupcake itself was a masterpiece! Each bite offered up just enough apple chunk and they were popping with cinnamon and nutmeg flavor. The frosting was just like the caramel you would get on a caramel apple. They were the kind of treat that is excellent your first day but loose their ZING on day two. The caramel sweats and makes the cupcake too wet. The cake is a definite do over but this time I am thinking with a caramel butter cream. I'll keep you posted on my next attempt at these goodies.

 I am already thinking pumpkin and made my first pumpkin dish of the season. Michael wanted chocolate chip cookies so, why not add some pumpkin and make pumpkin chocolate chip cookies? They were really good! The texture was more cake like then cookie, but they had a perfect balance of pumpkin and chocolate chip! Jade and Arfur were one of the lucky ones, they got a bag of cookies(and of course 37 pounds of Starbucks coffee). Of course, I feel much more lucky having received a few bags of Arfurs mom's homemade pierogis courtesy of Jade! I'm thinking my next attempt at pumpkin will be some sort of pumpkin ravioli, or some kind of pumpkin pasta. I'm always looking for good recipes or ideas so if you have any, drop me a line, you might just be as lucky as Jade and Arfur..

Recently I took Chunk to the vet and unfortunately he has been living up to his name, poor guy! The doc told me to cut his food in half and supplement with carrots if he is still hungry. His name is Chunk, of course he was still hungry!! So, I found myself swimming in carrots, and being me, my brain started going. CARROT CAKE, better yet, CARROT CAKE CUPCAKES.. So, the carrot shredding began, and an hour later two dozen cupcakes.. They were OK. It's always disappointing to shred three cups of carrots for an OK end result. The cream cheese frosting was to die for. Some reviews of the recipe said the cake itself was too crunchy on the edges but I find that most of the time when only some of the reviews are bad it's a bakers error. This time they were right.(because of course I don't make baking errors) Maybe I should put the cream cheese frosting on my apple cupcakes??  Chunk of course was very happy with the end result.... More carrots for Chunk!