Thanksgiving Recipe: Pumpkin Cookies!

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Happy Thanksgiving!

This year I didn't host a Thanksgiving dinner, or even have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner! My husband and I went to Frankie and Benny's (I get points because it's American themed), which was delicious! My little flat isn't big enough to do justice to the comfort foods that are a must-have for any Thanksgiving feast.

But I just couldn't let Thanksgiving pass by without cooking at least a little something festive. Pumpkin pie sticks out to me as the perfect Thanksgiving dessert, but honestly I didn't feel like a pie. So instead I settled on making some delicious pumpkin cookies! This is a recipe I've had for a while but never tried, and I can't remember where I got it. But the cookies are super soft - more like little cakes than a cookie! They're also really easy to customise - try adding some dried cranberries or a maple-pecan topping for an extra decadent dessert.

(Recipe without pictures at the bottom)

The Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup butter or margarine
• 1 cup canned pumpkin
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Canned pumpkin is pretty hard to come by in the UK

Method

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F (about 175 C - although for this recipe I used 180 C).

Combine your dry ingredients (except sugar) - so your flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Top tip: if, like me, you adore sea salt - that's fine. However, don't forget to grind it up!! I used the little chunks without thinking and had a couple of salty bites. It was still yummy though.

Yep, just like that. But, you know, stir it.

Now get out another bowl (I know, I know, more dirty dishes. It's worth it, I promise). Combine your sugar and butter - beat until nice and smooth. 

Appetising! 

You can use an electric mixer. I just don't have one.

Add your pumpkin, egg, and vanilla extract to your sugar butter and beat it all together. 

I much prefer extracts to flavourings. They're just so much yummier.

The pumpkin gives it such a lovely colour. I have a nail polish in a similar shade.

Now combine your pumpkin mixture with your flour mixture. 

THE MEETING OF THE MIXTURES! 

Mix the mixtures together until they form a good sticky dough. 

Magic is happening here.

Plop your dough onto prepared pans. I used a baking paper type thing - the cookies didn't stick and cleanup was super simple. To keep the cookies more uniform, I used a tablespoon to do my plopping.

Don't eat raw cookie dough - you could get sick! I mean, I totally did it anyways, but you so shouldn't.

Bake those bad boys for 15 minutes or until your edges are firm. 

That's a lot of cookies.

That's it! You're done! Let them cool for a few minutes and then go to town. Now, they're not the prettiest cookies out there. At all. But they were AMAZING! 

Don't worry cookies, I love you even though you're ugly. 

Pumpkin Cookies

2 1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

1/2 cup butter or margarine

1 cup canned pumpkin

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350F (175C)

Mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda, ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, and salt. 

In another bowl, combine sugar and butter/margarine until smooth.

Add pumpkin, egg, and extract to butter/sugar mixture. Beat until well mixed.

Combine pumpkin mixture with flour mixture and beat until a sticky dough forms.

Drop dough onto prepared pans and bake for 15 minutes or until edges are firm. 

Let cool before serving.

What's your favourite Thanksgiving recipe? 

How To Plan Thanksgiving

Freedom from Want, the Thanksgiving Picture by Norman Rockwell

Thanksgiving is right around the corner! For my British friends, Thanksgiving is when we get together with family to stuff ourselves silly and then watch Football. There are other traditions too, as unique as the families that celebrate. Most of you have probably already planned your Thanksgiving meal, but for those of you that haven't, here are a few tips. 

Know Your Crowd

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You may not be able to plan a menu in which every guest loves every dish, and you will almost certainly have the dreaded Picky Eater sitting down to your table. There isn't much you can do about that one, other than make sure they have at least one thing to eat. But for the rest, think about the people you are inviting. Are there any vegetarians? Allergies? Religious restrictions? If you don't know - ask! 

In my family, none of us are super crazy about turkey. However, none of us would feel quite right without it! Silly, right? But knowing this, I would never plan a Thanksgiving meal without a big fat bird. It also wouldn't be Thanksgiving without my mom's special cornbread stuffing or a big buttery pot of mashed potatoes. You won't be able to include everyone's personal favourite dish, but you can totally include the all around crowd pleasers.

Don't Overdo It

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Like I said above, you just cannot incorporate every beloved comfort food into your Thanksgiving feast. Don't forget, you have to actually cook all the food you serve. The more dishes you decide on, the more time you're going to have to spend cooking and the more money you're going to have to spend. Food can get expensive! Your Thanksgiving shouldn't be spent stressing over how you're going to get 20 dishes on the table. You should be relaxing with friends and family and basking in the praise heaped upon your glorious spread.

This goes for planning your presentation as well. Rather than attempting to make every single side look worthy of Food Network, choose one or two things to really make an effort on. Your big, beautiful roasted turkey won't need much - it makes a mouth watering centrepiece all on it's own. I personally like to make a beautiful desert. 

Those are CUPCAKES! That I made!!! 

Make Ahead

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Believe it or not, you can make a TON of food up to weeks ahead of time! This can make your life so much easier, it will also spread the cost of the meal out. Check out this list from Food.com for a few recipes! 

So, what am I doing for Thanksgiving you ask? Surely I'm going to be serving up a host of tasty American dishes just like momma used to make, right? Nah. My flat is way too small for that this year. So we're going to Frankie and Benny's. That's a great perk of spending Thanksgiving Day in England - all the restaurants are open! 

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What are your favourite Thanksgiving dishes? 

Poke's Thoughts on Online Relationships

Awww, wedding picture :) 

This past week a good friend of mine has been going through a rough time. Her husband is currently in the ICU, unable to breathe on his own.  My heart hurts for her, and as always in situations like this, I just feel so helpless. It's hard enough to provide help in a scenario like this, but harder still when you are thousands of miles away.

The thing about this friend is, I've never met her in person. That's right, our friendship has been entirely online. This is not exactly new to me, my husband and I met online almost ten years ago. Some people seem to find it odd that you can develop a deep and meaningful relationship on the internet. Yet, I have before and continue to do so. The things I feel for this friend in distress are just the same as the things I would feel if she lived on my street. So, this got me thinking about online relationships in general.

Image from Chibird

How They Start

I've never actively sought online friendships. They've just happened, just like in real life. When planning my wedding I joined a wedding forum. I became a frequent poster and grew close to other frequent posters. We've since created our own space which is much more private and intimate, and our friendships have grown as a result. Many of us have met in person.

My online friend and I on the way to lunch together! 

How They Work

The best way to make a relationship of any kind last with someone is time. This goes for online and offline. You need to talk, connect, show a real effort to stay in touch and stay involved. Before I moved to the UK, I talked with my friends daily. Now the time differences makes that difficult, but I still manage to log on a couple of times a week. Before we were able to live together, my husband and I talked every single day. Skype is a great way to keep in touch with people and feel closer to them. My husband even paid for an American number so I could call him from anywhere using any phone at no charge to me. It's something I still use to keep in contact with my family. 

Gestures that show you are thinking about your friend/significant other can really help when you're apart. These can be as simple as a sweet picture posted to their Facebook wall

Chibird is a new discovery for me. I love it!! 

To a gift in the mail! Obviously when you're friends with a large community of people, this sort of thing can get expensive. We have exchanges - we use Elfster to draw names out of a virtual hat and exchange gifts. It's a great way to connect with people and learn more about them. 

My gifts for the Halloween exchange we just did. 

So, essentially, you'll want to treat any online relationship or friendship the same way you'd treat it in real life! Simple, right?

Stay Safe

Be internet-smart. You don't want to have to call in these guys! (From Catfish: The TV Show)

This is probably the most important part - stay safe! This is a group of people I have known for years! Don't rush into giving anyone your personal information. Unfortunately, it's all too easy to become someone else online.

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Disclaimer:
This is not a definitive guide to online relationships and friendships or internet safety. It takes more than a few paragraphs on a blog to be fully informed about such things, it's just a little snippet from my own experiences!