Pumpkin chocolate chunk espresso muffins, and autumn.

Yesterday night I made these:


Pumpkin chocolate chunk espresso muffins

I riffed off my family's pumpkin bread recipe with Handle the Heat's Banana Espresso Chocolate Chip Espresso Muffins and some simple experimentation, with an approximate resulting recipe of:

( Pumpkin chocolate chunk espresso muffins recipe. )

If I did it again, I'd either cut down on the sugar (which I'd already decreased from the family recipe), or omit the chocolate or use darker chocolate (this was 68%); as it is, they're a little sweet. Chocolate chips may be better than chocolate chunks, for better distribution and so that they don't all sink into the heart of the muffin, which tastes fine but looks boring. I went heavy on the spices, which is lovely; it could probably use even more espresso powder, however, so that that flavor is more distinct. I might also increase the pumpkin and decrease the oil just a touch.

I'm heading down to Corvallis this evening to spend a few days there, and I'll bring about a dozen of these to spread around. It's good timing: I can show Mum how my first version of our pumpkin bread recipe turned out, and with others to help us eat these Dee and I won't drown in dessert. This weekend is also the Fall Festival, an unintended and delightful coincidence—I was thinking of going to the farmer's market with Papa, and now we can do both, and I can't wait. The weather has been a bit warmer these last few days, but the young maple one house down is going gold, and so help me autumn is here.

(In fact, I made pumpkin muffins because we had extra pumpkin puree after Dee made a simple, fantastic pumpkin soup. We had it with grilled (fake) chicken/havarti/arugula/kalamata sandwiches that night, and the next day we had it with toasted crusty bread with topped cream cheese. Both were fantastic, and you wish you had been there to have some.)

Pet spam: Kuzco in the sun, and August the bedding princess.

While I had my camera downstairs* to photograph pumpkin muffins, I thought I'd prove that:


Hey would you look at that this little guy also lives here.
A few weekends back, Devon and I did some touch-up painting in my bedroom and in the dining room/office downstairs. As a result, we were able to move my bed and rearrange my room, and move Dee's office, and construct furniture for Dee's office, and reposition Kuzco. Getting things done is a cascading chain for both the good and the bad: get it started and it can keep going, but if you want to get it done you have to do a dozen other steps first. Anyway, all this means is that Kuzco is approximately in the area he'll have permanently. He still needs a custom cage built for the space (this is his roomy-but-still-undersized travel cage), but he's so positioned now that he gets some nice sun early in the day (when it's always cool enough to want some nice sun), and he's right by the windowsill so August can now sunbathe while watching Guinea Pig TV. Life is good.

( +1 of Kuzco. )

Meanwhile, August was on the couch going:


Dis blanket also mine.

( +1 of August. )

I have laundry to do, and a bag to pack, and so off with me.

* I bought my camera as a high school graduation gift for myself, and it's officially showing its age. The lens is dusty and needs cleaned, 4.0 megapixels just ain't what it used to be, and now the battery is dying—battery life had been falling for years, but as of a week ago it's fallen to about four minutes between charges, so I have to tether it to an outlet to do much with it. Fun!