Salted Caramel Pumpkin Blondies

Alternating layers of sweet pumpkin batter and rich salted caramel sauce bake up into the most succulent pumpkin blondies you'll ever want to eat. Pass these around for your Halloween party, or even Thanksgiving dessert! They are that special.

Some of you may have noticed that my recipes are a haphazard combination of measures. Sometimes by weight in grams or ounces, equally often cups and milliliters and other volume measures. My problem is that I have moved all over the world collecting cookbooks (and recipes from friends!) so I have gotten quite comfortable mixing and matching. I own two sets of measuring cups, US and UK, where a cup varies from eight ounces in the former to nine ounces in the latter. I don’t actually own a separate set of measuring spoons, but I know that an Australian recipe calling for a tablespoon of something needs four teaspoons instead of the US three. Thank goodness all teaspoons are 5ml!

I have a wonderful set of vintage scales, a gift from my mother, procured by a dear friend in Aberdeen, which has both imperial and metric weights. This is my very favorite thing in my kitchen and until I bought a digital scale, and I used it all the time.



When using my US cookbooks, I often measure things out, then tip them in the digital scale and write the weight in pencil in the cookbook, so I can just weigh the item the next time I use the recipe. How we ever started using cups, I do not know, because weighing is so much easier - and more accurate!

If you too find yourself with a foreign recipe, online or in a cookbook, check out Traditional Oven, the website I often use for conversions. It has been a godsend! But whichever measure you use, you'll want to make my salted caramel pumpkin blondies.

Salted Caramel Pumpkin Blondies

To give everybody credit: My recipe was adapted from this recipe from BakedBree.com which was in turn adapted from this recipe from SingForYourSupperBlog.com which was in turn adapted from a recipe for basic pumpkin blondies from Annies Eats, who adapted hers from Martha Stewart. And so it goes.

Ingredients
2 cups or 250g plain flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated or ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (245g) room temperature butter
1 1/4 cups or 250g brown sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract (Check out the link if you'd like to make your own.)
1 can (15 oz.) pumpkin (not pie filling)
1 cup store-bought caramel syrup with 1/2 teaspoon of sea salt added or this lovely recipe. I made this myself and ended up with a much darker caramel sauce.

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C. Combine all dry ingredients: flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda and salt in a large bowl.

Cream together the butter and brown sugar until very light and fluffy in another bowl.

Add the egg and vanilla extract to the butter and sugar.

Now beat in the canned pumpkin.

Finally, fold in the reserved flour mixture a few spoons at a time, and stop stirring when the batter is just combined. This is going to be really thick.

Line a 9×9 baking pan with parchment paper and spread half the batter around evenly.

Bake in your preheated oven for 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and pour the caramel sauce over the partially baked batter.

Carefully spoon the remaining batter over the caramel.

Spread to cover, as best you can. A gentle touch is key.

Return the blondies to the oven and bake for another 30 minutes. A toothpick should come out clean. Let the blondies cool before cutting.

Sprinkle with powdered sugar or drizzle on more salted caramel sauce before serving.

Enjoy!

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Marshmallow Turtle Bars #FoodieExtravaganza

Caramel, chocolate and pecans are the key ingredients of those delicious little candies known as turtles. Add a crust and throw a few mini marshmallows in the mix and what you’ve got is marshmallow turtle bars. They are sticky, gooey and more-ish!

This month my Foodie Extravaganza group is bringing you loads of chocolate recipes, both sweet and savory, in celebration of National Chocolate Day at the end of October. I’m not a big sweet eater but I am fond of chocolate when it is either dark, semi-sweet or paired with caramel. A dark or semi-sweet chocolate caramel combination would be ideal, especially with pecans. Which brings us to my recipe.

These guys are sooooo good.

Ingredients
2 cups or 250g flour
1/2 cup or 63g confectioners' sugar
3/4 cup or 85g unsalted butter, chilled
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 14-ounce or 397g can sweetened condensed milk
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup or 115g pecans, coarsely chopped
3/4 cup or 150g semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup or 165g toffee-and-chocolate candy (such as chopped up Heath bars)
1 cup or 50g mini marshmallows

Method
Heat oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your 9 x 13 inch or 23 x 33cm pan by greasing it or lining it with baking parchment. Personally, I'm a fan of the parchment.

Cut the chilled butter into cubes and put it in a food processor with the flour, confectioners' sugar, and salt. Pulse until the dough just starts to hang together.

Use your clean hands to press the dough firmly into your prepared pan.

Bake until golden around the edges, about 12-15 minutes.


In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the condensed milk, egg, and vanilla. Pour the filling over the baked crust.

Sprinkle on the marshmallows first, then the chopped pecans, chocolate chips, and toffee pieces putting some of each until you’ve used up all of them.

Bake until the filling is set, the edges are golden brown, and the marshmallows are melted, about 25 minutes.

Cool completely and cut into bars. If you live in a warm climate, you might want to keep these in the refrigerator.

Enjoy!

How will you celebrate National Chocolate Day? I’d like to recommend making a few of these. Many thanks to our host this month, Kathleen from Fearlessly Creative Mammas.

• 2 Kiss Cupcakes from Sneha's Recipe
• Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins from Not Too Shabby Gabby
• Chile Ancho Sopa de Chocolate from Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Chocolate Blintzes from Sew You Think You Can Cook
• Chocolate Lovers Dream Cake from Cookin and Craftin
• Chocolate Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Chocolate Rugelach from Hardly a Goddess
• Crispy Chocolate Surprise Balls from G'Gina's Kitchenette
• Hot Fudge Cheesecake Brownies from Cookaholic Wife
• Kahlua Chocolate Cake from Making Miracles
• Marshmallow Turtle Bars from Food Lust People Love
• Nutty Chocolate Fudge from Basic N Delicious
• Queen Anne Squares from Tara's Multicultural Table
• Simple Chocolate Cake from Passion Kneaded
• Slow Cooker Chicken Mole from Caroline's Cooking
• Triple Chocolate and Cream Trifle from Fearlessly Creative Mammas

Foodie Extravaganza celebrates obscure food holidays or shares recipes with the same ingredient or theme every month.

Posting day is always the first Wednesday of each month. If you are a blogger and would like to join our group and blog along with us, come join our Facebook group Foodie Extravaganza. We would love to have you!

If you're a reader looking for delicious recipes, check out our Foodie Extravaganza Pinterest Board! Looking for our previous parties? Check them out here.

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Creamy Camel Milk Caramel

Cooked in the traditional long slow simmering way of dulce de leche or cajeta, this rich caramel is made with camel’s milk, said to be a healthy alternative to cow’s milk and better tolerated by folks with allergies. Here's one fact: It is deliciously creamy. 

I have been known to do a little happy dance when the farmer’s market in Houston still has some goat’s milk left because usually all of their bottles are spoken for, by regular customers. But sometimes I get lucky. And one of my favorite things about living in Singapore was the goat farm where I could go and buy the milk directly from the, ahem, producers. Homemade soft cheese made with goat’s milk is the best. When we moved to Dubai a couple of years ago, I discovered that one could buy camel’s milk in the grocery store, which intrigued me but somehow I never got around to buying any.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, at the first birthday celebration of Food e Mag dxb, an online magazine to which I’ve been a contributor (It’s gorgeous! Do go have a look!) I met a Dubai-based cookbook author who has a weekly show on local talk radio. I regularly listen to Suzanne Husseini  on 103.8 FM Thursday mornings from 10 a.m. – noon, because her topic is one of my favorites, food! Since the party was on a Wednesday evening, nosy parker that I am, I had to ask what the focus would be for the next day’s show. And because she’s a sweet person, Suzanne didn’t tell me to buzz off. She said it would be camel milk.

That's Suzanne in the hat, and me, on the right, with our Food e Mag dxb's editors Debbie Rogers and Ishita B Saha.. 

I learned so much from that show! Do you know that the farmer cannot separate the camels from their calves, as we do to cows, or they’ll stop producing milk? Also, the top producers only make between 5 and 20 liters a day vs. 40 liters from top producing cows. Camels are not mature enough to be mated until they are four years old and they carry their babies for more than 13 months before giving birth. Compare that to cows that can mate at 13-15 months old and have a gestation of nine and a half months. Or goats that can be bred at seven months old and that give birth after only five months! So, why would a farmer choose to raise camels for milk? It will come as no surprise to learn that camels are uniquely suited to the dry environment here and, while they don’t produce as much milk, they also don’t need as much water as other dairy animals would.

Camelicious! 

Camel milk doesn’t coagulate as easily as goat or cow milk so I decided that cheese would not be my first foray into using it. Instead, I decided to try making cajeta – that sticky sweet caramelized condensed milk usually made with goat’s milk. Or if bought in a can as dulce de leche, cow’s milk. Make this on a slow day when you are going to be home for a few hours anyway because it has to cook long and low. Mine took almost three hours.

Adapted from this recipe on Pati’s Mexican Table.

Ingredients – yields about 1 1/4 cups or 300ml creamy camel milk caramel
4 1/4 cups or 1 liter camel milk
3/4 cup or 175g demerara sugar
1  1/2 teaspoons  vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon flakey salt or 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt or to taste

Method
Pour your sugar, vanilla and baking soda into a large thick-bottomed pot with the milk and heat gently over a medium flame, stirring until all the sugar is dissolved.

Let it come to a slow boil and then turn it right down, or add a diffuser under the pot. I had other things going on at home that day and I was afraid the milk might scorch so I used the diffuser.

These are great for making sure the rice at the bottom of the pot doesn't burn either. 

If you are a thermometer-using type, I kept one in the pot and the temperature stayed between 165-180°F or 74-82°C.

Cook slowly, stirring occasionally, until the milk reduces by at least half and starts to turn a warm golden color.

Keep a closer eye on it now and stir more often. The camel milk caramel is done when a spoon pulled through the liquid shows the bottom of the pot for a few brief moments before running together again. It should be a deep golden color.

Put a metal teaspoon in a clean jar and pour the caramel in. Remove the spoon and seal tightly.

Still pourable

The caramel will thicken considerably when refrigerated and will keep for several months.

Cold, it's pretty stiff.

This is great over ice cream or spread on bread or simply eaten with a spoon. Tomorrow I'll be sharing an Egyptian cookie recipe using it as well.

Enjoy!

Update: Here are the basbousa using the camel milk caramel!

Pecan Caramel Chocolate Muffins #MuffinMonday

The second in my candy bar series, made with Frey’s Caramel and Pecan milk chocolate, this sweet muffin has big dollops of caramel, just folded through the batter, leaving sweet golden streaks, and more than its fair share of toasted pecans. 

So I’m baking with my chocolate bar stash again. I take them out of the storage box and fan them out like playing cards, then choose one to recreate in muffin form, adding more of the key ingredients.  I almost did maple-walnut but my walnut supply is low. So now you have that one to look forward to, if I don’t get to white chocolate-lemon first. Or dark chocolate with chili. I know, I know. But I’m having fun!

Ingredients

Also contains hazelnuts. Why?

1 cup or 115g whole pecans, toasted
1 Frey Pecan & Caramel bar (3 1/2 oz or 100g)
2 cups or 250g flour
3/4 cup or 150g sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
3/4 cup or 180ml milk
1/4 cup or 60g butter, melted and cooled
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup or 80ml caramel - plus extra for drizzling on baked muffins, optional

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and either grease a 12-cup muffin tin or line it with paper muffin cups.

Chop your chocolate bar with a knife and put aside 12 chunks for decorating the tops of the muffins. Set aside 12 of the prettiest pecans and chop the rest up to add into the muffin batter.

In a large bowl, stir together your flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.

In another smaller bowl, whisk together your eggs, milk, melted butter and vanilla. Fold your wet ingredients into your dry ones.  Stop when there is still quite a bit of flour still unmixed.

Fold in the larger pile of the chopped chocolate bar and the chopped pile of pecans.

Drop the caramel in spoonfuls all over the top of the batter.

Fold it in, trying not to stir too hard. You want to see big golden streaks of caramel in the batter still.

Divide the batter between your prepared muffin cups.

Top each with a piece of chocolate and a pecan.

Bake in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick stuck in the middle comes out clean.

Allow to cool for a few minutes in the pan and then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

Once cool, drizzle on a little more caramel if desired.

Enjoy!

The Candy Bar Series

1. Dark Chocolate Toasted Sesame Muffins using Lindt Dark Chocolate Roasted Sesame

3. White Chocolate Lemon Muffins using Movenpick Swiss Chocolate White Lemon

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English Toffee Bundt with Drunken Dulce Drizzle #BundtBakers

Fold bits of toffee candy into a batter rich with cream and deep brown sugar for a tender Bundt replete with caramel and love. Drizzle it lavishly with rum-spiked dulce de leche and you’ve got a full-blown love affair on a cake plate. 

Caramelicious deliciousness
I’m on deadline here, folks, because they are getting ready to turn my power off in a couple of hours – something about upgrading the system – and I’ve got to share this Bundt with you! So, no long story or introduction except to say that it’s BundtBaker time again and our host this month, the talented Lauren of Sew You Think You Can Cook has proclaimed Caramel as our theme.

Caramel comes in many forms but one of my favorites is caramelized condensed milk, otherwise known as dulce de leche. One of my others is toffee, which is basically sugar that’s been caramelized to which butter and/or cream is added. I love to make this candy for holiday gifts. I make it and wrap it and get it out of the house pronto, or I will eat it all, one shard at a time until it’s gone, gone, gone. So buttery, sweet, salty, nutty, in a word, fabulous. It’s kind of a homemade Almond Roca, but with bigger pieces of almond.


It’s not quite holiday gift giving season so I saved myself the calories and bought a box of Almond Roca to use in the cake, every gram of which went in or on the cake. Feel free to use homemade toffee, if you have some.

Ingredients
For the batter:
3 cups or 375g flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 tablespoon cocoa
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups or 300g dark brown sugar

1 1/2 cups  or 355ml whipping cream

3 eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla

1 cup toffee candy, chopped, or 140g

For the drizzle:
3/4 cup or 240g dulce de leche
1 tablespoon dark rum
Good pinch salt

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your Bundt pan by greasing it generously with butter or non-stick spray. I’m not even kidding a little bit here. The toffee bits in the batter will melt and stick to your pan if you don’t. I coated mine once with the spray and put it in the refrigerator. Then, when I was ready to fill it, I took it out and gave it another coating of spray. Even so, one piece of toffee tried to stick up near the top, until I loosened it gently with a wooden skewer. You have been warned!

Sift your flour, baking powder, cocoa, baking soda and salt into a large bowl.

Use electric beaters or your stand mixer to beat the cream and brown sugar together for several minutes until the brown sugar is dissolved.

Add in the eggs, one at a time, and beat after each until well combined.

First egg going in. The brown sugar and cream mixture looks good enough to drink!

A few serving spoons at a time, add the flour mixture to the batter, beating well as you go along. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula as well. When it’s all in, beat on high for two minutes.

Fold in about three-quarters of your toffee pieces, reserving one-quarter to decorate the Bundt after the glaze is added.

Pour into your prepared Bundt pan and bake for about one hour or until a wooden skewer comes out clean. If the top starts to darken too much before the center is done, cover it with a piece of foil.

It wasn't that full but, boy, howdy, did it rise while baking!

Allow the Bundt to cool in the pan for about 10 minutes before turning over and out onto a cooling rack. Don’t leave it longer than this because you don’t want the toffee pieces inside to harden and stick to your pan.

Cool completely before attempting to drizzle on the glaze.

To make the glaze, add your one tablespoon of dark rum and the good pinch of salt to the dulce de leche. Stir with a fork or small whisk until the rum is completely incorporated. At first it looks like it’s not going to mix in but persevere.

When the Bundt is completely cool, drizzle on the spiked dulce. You will not use it all and that's okay. I have a plan for the balance.

Now stick on your reserved pieces of toffee.

Serve extra dulce de leche on the side in a shot glass. :)

Enjoy!

Check out all the fabulous caramel Bundts everyone has been baking this month!

• Apple Butter Bundt Cake with Cider Caramel Glaze by Cassie of Cassie's Kitchen
• Apple Pecan Bundt Cake with Caramel Glaze by Aisha of La Cocina de Aisha
• Belle Helene Bundt Cake by Jelena from A Kingdom for a Cake
• Brown Butter Praline Bundt Cake with Salted Caramel Drizzle by Tux of Brooklyn Homemaker
• Caramel Apple Bundt Cake by Kaylin of Keep it Simple, Sweetie
• Caramel Banana Bundt Cake by Kathya of Basic N Delicious
• Caramel Cake with Caramel Cream Cheese Icing by Rebekah of Making Miracles
• Caramel Chocolate Bundt Cake from Natalia of Principiando en la Cocina
• Chocolate Caramel Apple Bundt Cake by Lauren of Sew You Think You Can Cook
• Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake with Peanut Butter Caramel Sauce by Laura of Baking in Pyjamas
• Cornmeal Bundt Cake with Caramel Popcorn by Patricia of Patty's Cake
• English Toffee Bundt with Drunken Dulce Drizzle by Stacy of Food Lust People Love
• Fall Classic Caramel Bundt Cake by Maleka of La Luna en Dulce
• Fair Toffee Apple Bundt by Jane of Jane's Adventures in Dinner
• Milky Way Bundt Cake by Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Salted Caramelized White Chocolate Glazed Butterscotch Pecan Bundt Cake by Laura of The Spiced Life
• Snickers Bundt Cake with Caramel Glaze by Bea and Mara of I Love Bundt Cakes
• Spiced Apple Bundt Cake with a Caramel Brickle Drizzle by Teri of The Freshman Cook
• Spiced Caramel and Pear Bundt Cake by Rocío of Kids&Chic
• Three Flavor Zebra Bundt Cake - Vanilla, Caramel and Chocolate by Caro of En la Cocina de Caro

What is BundtBakers? 
#BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme.  Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on the BundtBakers home page.

We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Would you like to join us? 
If you are a food blogger and would like to join us, just send an email with your blog URL to foodlustpeoplelove@gmail.com.