The first thing you might notice about this piece of pumpkin pie is that it does not look like a traditional slice of pie. Instead of using a 9-inch round pie pan, I opted to use an 8-inch square baking pan. I did it partially out of laziness because the square pan was right in front of me and fresh from the dishwasher, and partially because I wanted to do something a bit out of the ordinary.

Before I even get into the pie, I think it turned out beautifully this way and when I am baking another pie that has a crumb crust (graham or otherwise) I will definitely make a square pie again. This is also a good trick for anyone who has limited access to kitchen equipment but owns a square casserole dish.

Back to the pie.

This pumpkin pie is made with canned pumpkin, but was inspired by a recipe from The Good Home Cookbook (read more about it here), rather than the one on the back of the can of pumpkin. I altered the spicing, the amount of liquid, the crust and, of course, the shape of the pie, so it really looks nothing like the original recipe in anything but the baking time, which should be just about the same regardless of whether you make a round or square pie.

The pie itself is delicious: creamy, light and flavorful. One bite makes you think of fall in an instant - and I can attest to the fact that two pieces make you feel even better. I left ginger out of the filling and, instead, used crushed gingersnaps to make the crumb crust.

I think pumpkin pie is one of the easiest you can make - especially since I’ve eliminated an actual pie plate. Make two and enjoy one yourself, then use the other to impress your family.

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I was asked by Sara, from i like to cook, if I would be interested in trying a couple of recipes from Dorie Greenspan’s new cookbook, Baking: From My Home to Yours, I immediately said yes. My general feeling is that no matter how many recipes or cookbooks I have (a lot is an understatement), I can always have more. Besides, new cookbooks mean new pictures, and I love flipping through books for ideas even if I don’t make anything.

To choose my first recipe, I looked at the ones that were illustrated first. I wish that they all could have had pictures, as the photography was excellent, but given that the book was already 500+ pages, it was understandable that they didn’t want to make it any longer.

My first choice was for a recipe called Cinnamon Squares, slightly renamed here because I think that Cinnamon Chocolate Squares is a slightly more accurate name. The recipes is for a cake with a cinnamon-coffee-chocolate swirl running through the center of it. It would be a coffee cake, but for the fact that it is topped with a rich chocolate glaze - not usually a feature of coffee cakes.

The cake is dead easy to make and you don’t even need to cream the butter, since it goes in melted. The only difficult part is spreading the second half of the batter evenly on top of the cinnamon mixture without disrupting it. Once it is finished, the cake is moist on the inside and very flavorful. The corners of the cake were a tiny bit crisp at the edge, so keep an eye on the baking time. I think that this would be great with a streusel topping, but the chocolate glaze seemed to be a real showstopper - people loved it. Overall, this is a great cake. Make it as dessert and serve it with coffee or add your favorite streusel topping and make it for breakfast.

Incidentally, my only negative comment about the book is that there are only about 5 recipes for yeasted breads, and for a book titled Baking I would have expected all types of baking to be covered, not necessarily just a focus on baked goods. Of course, I love baked goods and the book is still a good one, but it’s not necessarily the only cookbook you’ll want if you want to bake breads, too.

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Meyer lemons, as I have mentioned before, are a type of lemon that is actually a hybrid between a tangerine or mandarin orange and a lemon. As a result, the fruit is slightly smaller than your average lemon and significantly sweeter, although it still has a very lemony flavor. Tasting a meyer lemon is more like tasting lemonade - albeit tart lemonade - than a regular lemon, as it lacks some of the bitterness that the ordinary lemons have.

Meyer lemons can be used in the same way as regular lemons, but will often impart a greater lemon flavor, since it does not have to be tempered by extra sugar. This is why meyer lemons work perfectly in these scones. They have a nice fresh lemon flavor that is not aggressive, and they are not very sweet, so you can taste the butteriness that makes scones so delicious in the first place.

The technique for scone making is very easy, since everything goes into one bowl. You do need to practice rubbing the butter into the flour, working it into a coarse, sandy mixture, but you can always cheat by pulsing the mixture in the food processor 5 or 6 times.

These scones are crisp on the outside, soft in the midde and not too dry. The lemon “glaze” must be added when the scones are hot out of the oven so it can set up without softening the “crust” on the top of the scone.

I suggest having a couple extra lemons on hand in case you need extra juice, although you could always try adding in a regular lemon if you have to.

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I must say that I felt a bit bad seeing that my front post was not about baking when this blog got a mention in the Guardian the other day, but to make up for that, I promise that this is a really good recipe.

I love gingerbread in just about any form it comes in, from cookies to cakes to pancakes, and usually look forward to cooler weather as a sort of permission to bake anything spicy. Of course, the temperature shot back up into the 80s today, so it wasn’t exactly cold outside - but let’s overlook that for now, shall we?

The original recipe for this gingerbread was in an old issue of Cooking Light I happened to flip through the other day. It had all of my favorite ingredients - buttermilk, molasses, blueberries - and was somewhat low in fat, too. I altered the original recipe by turning a cake into muffins and using less egg, since with light baked goods I feel that an extra egg can give the finished product and unpleasantly eggy taste. There only odd thing about the recipe is that it makes an unusual amount of batter. You could make 16 medium-sized muffins with it, or you could do what I did for the muffin pictured above and make 12 large muffins, filling the tins nearly to the top and discarding the small amount of leftover batter. The choice is yours. Both baking times are noted below.

The batter comes together in a flash and the muffins a nice contrast between spicier winter flavors and summer berries. The combination creates a very light, moist muffin that is dangerously addictive, especially if you have some cream cheese to spread on it and a nice hot cup of coffee to wash it down.

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Soups can be beautiful in person, but unlike most solid foodstuffs, they can be extremely difficult to “style” for photographs. Soups that are a solid color and smooth in texture are usually the most photogenic. Soups that have a lot of components, such as lentil soup or chili, tend to look overly busy, like a jumble of random, mushy ingredients. This soup fell into the unphotogenic category the first few times I made it, since the onions and cabbage - its main components - just turned sort of brownish. It tasted good, but I didn’t want to take a picture. Then, in a moment of food blogging epiphany, I decided to use red onion and red cabbage. Suddenly, the soup looked as vibrant and delicious as it tasted.

The soup is originally from a Sara Moulton recipe and I think that I first copied it down during one of her shows, back when she was still on the Food Network. It is very easy to make and involves minimal prep work. For anyone who has ever chopped up a cabbage, you probably know that it is one of the easiest veggies to work with after you cut out the core. The “hot” part of the soup comes from the red pepper flakes and the head level can easily be adjusted by eliminating a quarter teaspoon or so. The “sour” part comes from the balsamic vinegar, which adds a very slightly sweet-sour taste to the soup. Choose a good vinegar, since you’ll be able to taste it in the finished dish.

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Occasionally, you’ll see a blogger write in that “real” life - in some form - got in the way of blogging and interrupted their flow. I have to say that I, too, recently had that very same conflict and. as a result, my posting schedule was interrupted. I had a busy couple of weeks and, to cap it all off, it was my birthday. I don’t apologize for that last bit, but I do apologize to everyone who enjoys visiting my blog as much as I enjoy writing it. I’ll try to get back on a more regular posting schedule.

But first, here are some cupcakes that I made in honor of my birthday. Don’t worry - I had a “real” cake, too, and I suspect that I may yet have another cake before the week is up. This is just something quick that I through together, taking the very easy eggless chocolate cake and making it a little bit richer by using buttermilk in place of milk and melted butter in place of oil. They’re quite chocolaty, but they are also light and moist. I think that the buttermilk and butter make them have a little more depth than the recipe with oil, but they are both excellent. I think that this serves as a good example of how some substitutions can be made in recipes and still produce good results. You do, however, have to take into account the properties of the things you are substituting. In this case, I reduced the amount of vinegar in the mix because the buttermilk is acidic.

For the cake in the picture, I used lightly sweetened whipped cream as a “frosting.”

But my favorite part was blowing out the candle.

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