Slow Cooker Pumpkin Streusel French Toast

If you are looking for an easy, seasonal breakfast for Thanksgiving look no further than this pumpkin streusel french toast made in your slow cooker! It's easy and delicious.

The great thing about a slow cooker french toast is you can throw it in early and it cooks while you get anything else you are having ready. I put mine in, cleaned up the house a bit, took a shower and then fried some bacon. Meanwhile it cooked on low in my Crock Pot.

Ingredients:
For French Toast:
Cooking spray
1 loaf of French bread
2 cups of cream
6 eggs
1 small can of pumpkin puree
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tsp of pumpkin pie spice
1/2 tsp of ground cinnamon
For streusel topping:
1/2 cup of flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
4T of butter (1/2 a stick)
1/2 tsp of ground cinnamon

Topping, just needs butter

If using 2 cups of heavy cream is too much for you, I can see how it would be, you can substitute milk. Probably also almond milk or other non-animal milks, though I haven't personally tried this yet.

Cooking equipment:
Large slow cooker, I use a 6qt oval Crock Pot
Pastry blender (or large fork)

Directions:
Tear or cut bread into 1 inch pieces. Mix eggs, cream, pumpkin puree and spices, with a whisk ensuring that eggs are beaten and well-incorporated. Spray slow cooker crock with cooking spray and add bread pieces, covering them thoroughly with liquid and spice mixture. Stir until all bread pieces are lightly coated. Refrigerate in crock for at least 4 hours and up to overnight.

Shortly before you begin cooking, you need to prep your streusel topping. I don't suggest doing this the night before but it's pretty quick in the morning, it takes maybe 10 minutes. The butter needs to be close to room temperature, I microwave mine for about 30 seconds to achieve this. When your butter is warmed, add all streusel ingredients to a small mixing bowl and blend with your pastry blender or large fork until they are well mixed.

Just prior to cooking, sprinkle the top of the bread mixture with the streusel topping. Cook in slow cooker on low temperature for 2 to 2.5 hours and serve.

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Pumpkin cupcakes with buttercream icing

It is officially Fall. Alright, it's been Fall for a while but the weather has been surprisingly warm during early Fall in DC so I wasn't feeling very Autumnal. However, that has changed now and I'm ready to bake with pumpkin, make butternut squash soup and drink hot coca!

Plus I've been seeing pumpkin recipes on Pinterest since at least July.

Pumpkin Cupcakes
adapted from Martha Stewart's pumpkin cupcakes

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon coarse salt
1 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 cup packed light-brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 can (15 ounces) pumpkin puree

 

Directions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In large mixing bowl, combine all ingredients and mix thoroughly (be sure the butter mixed in well). Fill  muffin cups with paper liners and then fill 1/3 full with batter. Bake for 20-25 minutes.

Makes 2 dozen.

Buttercream icing

Ingredients*

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened

2-3 cups of powdered sugar, divided

1 tsp vanilla extract

In medium mixing bowl, beat the stick of butter, 1 cup of powdered sugar and the vanilla until well mixed. While mixing, add additional powdered sugar until it reaches the desired sweetness.

*Note: You can also add 1-2 Tb of heavy cream to get a fluffier icing

These cupcakes were amazing. I already want to make more. The biggest compliment was my boyfriend (who doesn't eat) eating 3 before 1pm. My biggest mistake was taking them to work and giving a bunch away instead of eating them all myself. Unfortunately the photos did not turn out well but trust me - they were so, so good.

Repeat offender: pumpkin cheesecake

This was so good the first time, I made it again. This time with a little cinnamon in my homemade graham cracker crust - I did not cheat so much! Follow your normal graham crust and add just a 1/2 tb of cinnamon (or this recipe).

Pumpkin nut bars

Around my forth bite of the persimmon nut bars I made recently, I thought, "hmmm...these are really tasty, but the persimmon flavor isn't quite strong enough, I bet they would be yummy with another kind of fruit."

A few days later, I had just been to the grocery store, and excited to see pumpkin was back in stock after the fall harvest, I had bought 3 cans, without any direct intention of how to use them. It was an impulse buy, like gum at the cash register or big blocks of feta cheese.

The fates coincided. I would make pumpkin flavored [persimmon] bars. I decided to double the recipe and make a 9x13 pan of said bars because I had a friend who'd be coming to stay in a few days and I thought it would be nice to have something to feed her. And I like pumpkin, have I mentioned this?

I start mixing up my ingredients and realize I'm just tad short of almost everything essential to make a double batch. I needed 1 cup vegetable oil and had to use about a 1/4 cup of olive oil to make it. I was almost a whole cup shy of flour and tossed in some bread flour, not really sure what the difference was and what the consequences might be. I also noticed half way through that I made a serious judgement mistake in trying to make the persimmon bars with pumpkin puree. Anyone see it? Yea the texture of the two is totally different. I thought with the spices it would be a nice flavor combo but I probably should have looked up a pumpkin bar recipe, batter was very cake-like. I even put in some extra (bread) flour. But I baked it anyway. What's the worse that can happen? Already used all the ingredients, might as well go all the way!

Results? Pumpkin cake. So not bars, but very moist and fluffy pumpkin cake. It also made a ton, I've been eating it for days and still have some, plus I put a fair amount in the freezer. So sometimes the random experiments work! But I still probably need to learn to check my ingredients before I start.

Thanksgiving wrap-up and fabulous baking party

Thanksgiving past in a whirlwind of eating - and very little cooking on my part. I was treated to two fabulous Thanksgivings by my grandmother and sister. Grandma cooks old school, she uses lard. Yikes! But it was so good. She even made pumpkin pie with pumpkins that my sister grew, now that is scratch! Grandma also made my favorite cookies, a German/family cookie called Spitzbueben. They are yummy but such a pain in the rear, maybe when Christmas rolls around I will get into the spirit and bake some...we'll see. It was also the first Thanksgiving that my sister and her husband hosted, and it was really tasty!

My contribution? Fairly limited. I made the pumpkin cheesecake recipe again to take along to my sister's place. This time I used the regular canned pumpkin that the recipe calls for (not the Libby's Easy) and added my own spices but I don't think it baked as nice, it was really thick.

Today, I made up for some lost time. A friend of mine hosted a holiday cookie party and we baked cookies for almost 5 hours! Ok so there was a Chinese food/Love Actually break but we still had 5 times the number of cookies that we were capable of eating. All the girls will be taking cookies to work tomorrow, at least that's my plan. It was a super cute party theme. I'm thinking of throwing something similar but just making some sugar cookies in advance and having the girls come over for decorating. A great way to get into the holiday spirit!

A fabulous fall cheesecake

Winter is coming. That means we all need to gain as much weight as possible to stay warm during the winter. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it! So it's time for cheesecake...pumpkin cheesecake!

During my pumpkin craving craze I saw a fabulous recipe for pumpkin cheesecake - I wasn't even looking, I swear. Do I need to eat an entire cheesecake by myself? I want to say yes, but I'm pretty sure the answer is no. So I made this to take over to a friend's place where I was headed for dinner. I got to have a slice (or two...) and leave the rest for other people to eat.

I cheated as much as possible. I used a pre-made graham cracker crust and the Libby's easy pumkin pie filling again, so it took almost no time at all. The directions say to bake it for 35-40 mins but I think next time (oh there will be a next time) I will bake it a little longer because it was a little runny making it hard to get out of the pan. I'm already planning to take this to my sister's place for Thanksgiving!


Taste: A-
Cost: C+
Waste: B

Finally, Pumpkin!

Well it's about time. I was seriously considering taking the metro to another grocery store because the one by my apartment did not have any pumpkin and then finally on Thursday, success! I've been there so often this week, I'm surprised none of the employees thought I was stalking them. I bought two cans, just to be safe. You never know when there might be a pumpkin emergency.

I actually bought the Libby's easy pumpkin pie mix because I thought the recipe called for cloves (it doesn't) and they were out! (What is wrong with this grocery store?) But this is probably best as I now am looking at recipes for pumpkin cheesecake and muffins...and did I mention that pumpkin pie is my favorite?

So I get ready to bake and realize I also needed buttermilk, which I did not buy...I go back to the store (I swear the manager mumbled something about a "restraining order") to get my buttermilk. What else could go wrong? Well, I was about 1/2 a cup short of brown sugar, so I had to supplement with some granulated sugar. So, I mix up the ingredients and am about to pour it in the pans and I realize I forgot to put in the butter, it's still sitting there on the cabinet. sigh. I'm once again ready to pour the batter into the pan and my mom calls, totally distracting me and I almost forgot to grease the pan! yikes.


But I finally have some pumpkin bread! And it's really tasty. One loaf to eat this week for breakfast and one to put in the freezer for later, which I made mostly so I wouldn't waste so much pumpkin and buttermilk.


See the recipe I used here.

Taste: B+
Cost: B
Waste: B+ (buttermilk)