Frosty Pumpkin Streusel Magic Bars

It’s spring! You know what that means…

lovin’ the sunshine

lovin’ the flirty sundresses

lovin’ the beaches

lovin’ life

loving the gifs!

How could you NOT love that creamy, squishy sweet pumpkin magic bar layer there?

Yes, I’m sure all of you who have seen my latest batch of posts know that I have recently become obsessed with gifs. Whether or not this will turn out to be an occupational hazard to my health remains to be seen.

Are they all lovely gifs? Certainly not. I’m a gif-fing amateur (is giffing a word? What good is being in an English doctoral program if you can’t make up your own words? Giffing is a word)–I use *cringe* online software because for some reason or other Windows Movie Maker does not work on my computer. I cannot figure out for the holy life of me why. (Any ideas, techie folks!)

So back to my point–these gifs are not Da Vincis. In artistic merit, they’re not Picassos or Monets or even Stephanie Meyers–nope, they’re definitely better than that.  Sorry, Team Mayers folks. It must be said.

As my dearest friend Clark Gable says about this very subject (or maybe it was a different one–I get mixed up when it’s this time of the school year), “Frankly m’dear–I don’t give a damn.“

Because I drool over them anyway. This may or may not have physically happened to me in the middle of, erm, lecture last week when I was staring at them. It’s okay, nobody noticed.

There were many reasons for my choosing to go total gif-scapade (invented word number two–I’m on a roll! er, a stale one), but the biggest one was when I made the world’s fudgiest brownies and wondered how in holy heck I could convince you all of it. Pictures didn’t seem like enough. (As the Genie says: “Not enough…”)

Movement? Yes.

Showing the fudginess? Yes.

Gif? Yes, yes, YES.

Also, if you haven’t already seen the gif-spirational sensation Izy over at Top with Cinnamon, you probably want to pop on over there. Give credit where credit’s due, I always say! She’s a gif-nius.

So. To wrap it up, since I’m out of writing space (and frankly, I have a pile of papers waiting here to be graded).

Students asked me for this recipe.

Fellow TA’s asked me for this recipe.

You’ll want this recipe.

Kind of like you’ll probably want to eat these gifs and photos off the screen right now. Don’t. It’ll ruin your screen. I’d advise running to your oven RIGHT NOW instead.

Because they’re scrumdiddlyfantawesomelectabletasticumptious.

(PhD…here I come.)

Frosty Pumpkin Streusel Magic Bars

Adapted from Bakers Royale

Yield: 9×9-inch baking pan

Ingredients:

• 2 cups graham cracker crumbs
• 1/2 cup butter or margarine, melted
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 1.5 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 (14 oz.) can sweetened condensed milk
• 3/4 heaping cup pumpkin puree
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ginger
• 1 large apple or 1.5 medium apples, peeled and chopped (I used Fuji)
• 1 cup sweetened shredded coconut
• 1 cup white chocolate chips
• 1 recipe streusel topping (below)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a 9×9-inch baking pan and set aside.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine graham cracker crumbs, melted butter, white sugar, and 1.5 teaspoons cinnamon until mixture is completely moistened. Press lightly but evenly into bottom of prepared pan.
3. In a large mixing bowl, combine sweetened condensed milk, pumpkin, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger. Pour evenly over the graham cracker crust. Sprinkle apples, coconut, white chocolate chips, and streusel over the top of the mixture; press ingredients lightly into the top so that they stick.
4. Bake in preheated oven 32-37 minutes, until center is mostly but not completely set. (If it’s still gooey, that’s perfectly fine–it will firm up a bit in the freezer).
5. Allow to cool slightly at room temperature, then pop the batch into the freezer for 30 minutes for easier cutting. Cut into bars; store leftovers in freezer.
6. NOTE: Alternatively, you can bake these bars 3-5 minutes longer than the listed baking time. This will result in bars that can be stored and served at room temperature.

Streusel topping:

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 6 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons butter or margarine
• 1/4 cup pecans, chopped

Directions:

1. In a medium bowl, combine flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt. Cut in butter and rub through with your fingers until the mixture resembles a coarse meal. Use as streusel topping for pumpkin magic bars, muffins, breads, or anything you’d like!

Hawaiian Banana Coconut Streusel Muffins

One of dearest professor’s spouses passed away last night.

I think all of us had a hard time staying focused after hearing the news. I know my mind was full of a whirlwind of thoughts.

What happens when it’s somebody who’s really close to you?

I can’t even begin to imagine. I thank my lucky stars that I can’t, but I can’t. I can’t. Period.

Sometimes those moments creep up on me and everything suddenly stops. Maybe I’m in the middle of scanning Beowulf. Maybe I’m standing in the kitchen half-listening as my mom chatters away at me while she’s making ma po tofu. Maybe I’m just sitting there thinking about something completely unrelated, like how I really want to make marshmallow Tigger Tails for Halloween.

The spoon stops stirring. The scanning is suspended. Whatever I’m doing, stops.

My parents aren’t going to be around for the rest of my life. Neither are my grandparents, or brother, or friends or mentors or cousins or aunts or uncles or all the people I know and love so dearly.

Wallflour Power: “Courage is not the lack of fear. It is acting in spite of it.” –Mark Twain

I have a really, really hard time wrapping my mind around that. I always thought I could handle the thought of it when the time came, in theory, but now I’ve been thrown off by something so removed from myself that I just. Can’t. Imagine.

And here I am, uploading photos and writing and trying to sort it all out.

It’s always a sign of how much somebody is respected when everyone around him or her feels the blow almost as keenly as if it had happened to them.

Another incredibly difficult thing I never had to think about was how you say you’re sorry when somebody has just lost their life partner, their significant other, their soulmate.

What do I say to that?

What does anyone say when this happens?

We’re sending her a card–I sent her a short email expressing my deepest sympathy and letting her know she’s in my thoughts. There is no template for somebody else’s sorrow.

Thoughts. I’m thinking aloud here. This isn’t a melancholy post, but I can’t help it being a very reflective one, so I’ll leave you all for now with a final photo and maybe, hopefully, more than just one morsel of food for thought to carry with you through the day.

Any thoughts you might have would be deeply appreciated–just as I appreciate all of you and wish you the best in appreciating all those around you.

Hawaiian Banana Coconut Streusel Muffins

Yield: 1 dozen muffins

Adapted from Allrecipes

Ingredients:

• 3 ripe bananas, mashed
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup butter, melted
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup flaked sweetened coconut
• 1/4 cup chopped nuts (optional)
• For Glaze-like streusel (optional): 1/4 cup honey mixed with 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon + 1/4 cup brown sugar + 2 tablespoons flour
• For streusel topping:
•  1/2 cup quick-cooking oats
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 2 tablespoons chopped nuts (optional)

Directions for muffins:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. In a large bowl, combine mashed bananas, sugar, egg, and melted butter. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and stir until just combined. Fold in coconut and nuts. Fill lined muffin tins 3/4 way each with batter.
2. At this point, if you’d like to make the glaze-streusel layer, combine all ingredients in a small bowl. Spread lightly on top of each batter-filled liner. (Note: the glaze adds an amazing dimension of crunch and sweetness, but it will also darken your muffins slightly. If you’re worried about appearance, skip this step and only do the post-baking oat streusel.) Bake muffins in oven for 17-19 minutes (making sure to top with streusel with 5 minutes left of baking), until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
   
3. To make streusel: While your muffins are baking, combine streusel topping ingredients in a small bowl. Press gently on top of each muffin five minutes before your muffins are done baking. This will prevent the streusel from melting or oozing off.

Magic Cookie Butter Bars

When’s the last time you felt so happy or inspired by something that you squealed, or wanted to really, really badly?

This week has been full of those moments. This week has also been a total vortex of busybody heckishness, resulting in a sleep-deprived mental state and horribly dry left eye. It’s funny how often these two go hand in hand, isn’t it? Emotional schizophrenia can be so tiring! I’d really rather just wrestle a grizzly bear or something.

I’m sure that would be much easier than grading a bunch of papers on Call of the Wild or Winnie-the-Pooh.

 Fortunately, right when I reach the point where I’m ready to throw in the towel and stalk the forests in order to satisfy my primordial instincts of bloodlust, something good usually happens.

To give you an example: early this morning I arrived at the office to find one of the other TA’s looking completely faint. Her first ever guest lecture was in a half hour’s time, and she had spent weeks exhausting herself over preparing for it. We talked about it and agreed that it was just a matter of getting it over with, and that she’d do just fine.

She even told me how she’d been thinking about how I lead discussions, and don’t get overly worked up over whether I know every little bit of info ever written about Lewis Carroll, because I love turning those gaps into a dialogue between my students and myself.

Flour Power: “When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?”“What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?”"I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully. “It’s the same thing,” he said.” –Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne

That was squeal potential moment #1. Bear hugs superseded any residual thoughts of bear wrestling that might’ve been running through my mind a moment before.

Well, kindness begets kindness. An hour later, she came back into the office with a huge grin and plenty of compliments under her belt about how well she had done.

That was squeal moment #2. Don’t you love it when you can squeal for somebody else’s happiness, despite the spiraling hole of despair underneath your own feet?

I just had squeal moment #3 as I was typing just now–my adviser told the class that he’s bringing an original replica of the teddy bears on which Winnie-the-Pooh, i.e. Edward Bear was based to class on Thursday.

If you see a tiny girl heading for the hills with a giant stuffed bear in her arms, you’ll know what happened. The 100 Acre Woods is kind of like the Hogwarts I never got into. I’m still waiting for my owl post, by the way.

Absolute magic.

Funflour Fact #8: Did you know that Winnie-the-Pooh wasn’t always the red-shirted tubby bear the world knows and loves? His original name was Edward Bear, and he made his first appearance in 1922 in a popular satirical periodical called Punch Magazine! It wasn’t until 1924 that he was officially dubbed Winnie-the-Pooh in his self-titled book by A.A. Milne.  

Kind of like these magic cookie bars.

Try these!

Magic Cookie Butter Bars

Yield: 1 9×13-inch baking pan

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter or margarine, melted
• 1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs, crushed
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 1 (14 oz.) can sweetened condensed milk
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup white chocolate chips (or any other kind)
• 1 1/2 cups flaked sweetened coconut
• 1 cup chopped nuts (any variety)
• 3/4 cup cookie butter (store-bought or homemade)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a medium bowl, combine melted butter or margarine, graham cracker crumbs, ground cinnamon, and white sugar. Press evenly into a well-greased 9×13-inch baking pan.
2. Pour half a can of sweetened condensed milk over crust. Sprinkle with both types of chocolate chips, as well as half of the coconut flakes and nuts. Pour remaining half of sweetened condensed milk evenly over the other toppings, then top with remaining coconut flakes and nuts.
3. Drop cookie butter in small dollops over other ingredients. 
4. Bake in preheated oven for 22-25 minutes, until top is golden brown. Allow to cool before cutting into squares.