Cinnamon Sugar Pumpkin Soft Pretzels

I've made soft pretzels before. I've been wanting to bake something pumpkin-y that wasn't pumpkin bread, muffins, or cookies. I often feel like my most creative recipes are born at night right before I go to bed. See, this is when I have the most creative cravings-- right when I'm about to go to sleep and can't make them. Does this happen to anyone else?

Anyway, I usually ask Austin to write my recipes down in his phone so I won't forget about them. I thought of this one about two weeks ago. I had to do some recipe research, because I wanted to make sure these were good. Cinnamon can prevent yeast from rising, so I had to figure out exactly how much I could add so it would still rise, but have enough cinnamon flavor. Also, I don't like when soft pretzels are bagel-like. I don't want my soft pretzels to have rubbery texture!

These are dang good, y'all.

You can make the dough in a bread maker, using a stand mixer, or kneading by hand.

Cinnamon Sugar Pumpkin Soft Pretzels

Yields: 12 pretzels

Dough
1 1/2 cups warm water
1 tbsp active dry yeast
2 tbsp brown sugar
1/2 cup pumpkin purée
4 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

Soak
2 cups hot water
2 tsp baking soda

Topping
3 tbsp butter, melted
5 tbsp sugar
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

Cream Cheese Dipping Sauce
3 oz cream cheese, room temperature
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
2 tbsp milk
2 tsp vanilla

Directions:

Bread machine: Put all ingredients in the bread machine in the order prescribed by your instruction manual. Let it knead the dough and rise ONCE until doubled in size, then remove to shape.

Mixer or hand: Combine water, yeast, and brown sugar. Let the yeast active for about 5-10 minutes. Add the remaining dough ingredients and knead with a dough hook for 4 minutes or by hand for 6 minutes, or until it springs back when you gently press your thumb into the dough.

To shape: Divide the dough into 12 equal pieces and roll into a 18"-20" snake. Shape it as a pretzel. Watch this video for more information.

To soak: Combine the water and baking soda. Quickly dip each pretzel into the hot water and baking soda mixture for about 3 seconds, then place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment or a silpat.

To bake: Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Let your pretzels rise on top of the oven as it heats up, about 20 minutes. Bake at 450 for 10 minutes, or until the tops begin to turn golden.

To top: Brush the melted butter on the hot pretzels, then sprinkle with combined sugar/pumpkin pie spice mixture.

To make the dipping sauce: Beat all the ingredients together.

After the soak, before rising

After baking, before butter/cinnamon sugar

Happy October!

Here are some other recipes you may like: 

Pumpkin Cheesecake Bread

Yup. That's right. Pumpkin. Cheesecake. Bread. It has the best of all worlds.

I mixed this recipe up a little bit. This is my favorite pumpkin bread recipe. I love it! I found this recipe years ago. It's called "Pumpkin Pie Bread." This bread tastes like pumpkin pie, people. Pumpkin pie. In bread form.

Also, I'm kind of obsessed with cheesecake swirls, so I added one of those. Delish.

Pumpkin Cheesecake Bread

Yields: 2 loaves (either 8x4 or 9x5-- I did one of each!)

Pumpkin Bread Batter

3 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tbsp pumpkin pie spice
2 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup veggie oil (or canola oil)
4 eggs
1 (15 oz.) can pumpkin purée
1/2 cup water

Cheesecake Swirl

1 (8 oz.) package cream cheese, room temperature
1/3 cup sugar
2 tbsp flour
2 eggs

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit. Grease two loaf pans (8x4 or 9x5 will work perfectly).

2. Whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and pumpkin pie spice. Set aside.

3. Beat together in a large bowl (a stand mixer works well) the sugar with the veggie oil. Add the eggs one at a time, beating between each egg. Add the pumpkin.

4. Add the dry ingredients slowly alternating with the water. Mix until combined.

5. Beat together the cheesecake swirl ingredients until smooth.

6. Pour a little more than half the batter between the two pans. Spread all of the cheesecake swirl batter in the two pans. Try to spread it out evenly, extending almost to the edges. Pour the remaining pumpkin batter on top and completely cover up the cheesecake swirl.

7. Bake for 55-70 minutes, or until a toothpick or cake tester comes out clean.

8. Let the bread cool in the pans for 15 minutes, then remove them and let them finish cooling on a cooling rack. Store in plastic wrap.

Happy autumn! 

Interested in more pumpkin recipes? Click the pictures!

 

Caramel Cupcakes

I recently took a dialect quiz. The point of the quiz was to demonstrate how differently people across the United States speak the English language. The quiz was scarily accurate... it identified my hometown and my parents' hometown as the places I'm most likely from. You should check out the quiz at this link. One of the questions was how I pronounced "caramel." Am I the only one who completely ignores the middle "a"? I say "CAR-ml."

Anyway, these cupcakes were a fun experiment for my husband's work luncheon. It was Harry Potter themed, so I wanted to go with something along the lines of butterbeer cupcakes. I adapted the cupcake recipe from Natasha's Kitchen, and I invented the frosting recipe.

Caramel Cupcakes 

Yields: 15 cupcakes

1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp cornstarch
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup canola or veggie oil
1/2 cup buttermilk (I always use milk with 1/2 tsp white vinegar)

1/3 cup caramel sauce (the ice cream topping kind is what I used)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit. Line cupcake pans with 15 cupcake papers. Whisk together the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Whisk for about 1 minute. You want to get everything really well incorporated.

2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat together the eggs with the sugar for about 30 seconds. Add the vanilla and oil, then beat for 15 seconds.

3. Add the flour mixture and buttermilk slowly, alternating between the two. Use a cookie scoop to divide the batter evenly among the 15 cupcake papers. I filled my cupcake paper halfway up the paper.

4. Bake 12-14 minutes, or until a toothpick or cake tester comes out clean.

Frosting

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
2 tbsp caramel sauce
4 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
milk for thinning

1. Beat the slightly softened butter for about 1 minute in the stand mixer. Add the caramel sauce.

2. Slowly add the powdered sugar, then add the vanilla. You may need a few teaspoons of milk or cream to thin the frosting out enough to pipe it.

To assemble the cupcakes:

Let the cupcakes cool. Use a very small round piping tip to fill cupcakes with the caramel sauce. Pipe frosting onto the cupcakes using a closed star tip. Drizzle with leftover caramel sauce. Enjoy!

My wonderful husband got me a fancy frosting piping bag and giant cupcake coupler for my birthday. Most useful present ever! 

Pumpkin Muffins

Fall is here. It's lovely. I haven't blogged in a while. I've been busy.

Here's Austin. He's great. 

The leaves are covering the ground all around Provo and they make a very satisfying crunch when I step on them. It's time for pumpkin flavored everything.

Recipe tweaked from The Girl Who Ate Everything.

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins

Yields 24 muffins

8 oz cream cheese (room temp)

1 cup powdered sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla

4 eggs

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 can pumpkin purée 

1 1/4 cup vegetable oil

3 cups AP flour

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp cloves

1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup sugar

5 tbsp flour

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

4 tbsp cold butter, cut into pieces

1. Beat together cream cheese, powdered sugar, and vanilla. Set aside. 

2. Preheat oven to 350. In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine eggs, sugar, pumpkin, and veggie oil.

3. While that's beating, mix together flour, baking soda, salt, and spices. Slowly add this to the wet ingredients. 

4. Using a food scoop, scoop batter about halfway up muffin papers in a muffin tin. Make small indents  in the batter and add about 1 tsp of the cream cheese mixture. Cover the cream cheese with about 1 tbsp more of the pumpkin batter. 

5. Using a pastry cutter, cut together sugar, flour, cinnamon, and butter until it resembles crumbs. Sprinkle atop the unbaked muffins.

6. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes. 

Bon appétit!