Franken Baker

4th day in the snow... enough said.

I made cupcakes for the girlies last night, so they were much happier with me today. "Can I have a cupcake?" YES! "Can I have another cupcake?" YES!

I'm giving permission like a cupcake enabler! Although there were some... issues... making these HotPink Love cupcakes last night...

The "franken" part of the cupcakes are explained after the jump.

But wait, there's MORE franken bake'n going on in the Medina kitchen. The cold weather has put hubby in the mood for pumpkin pie. He found some canned pumpkin in the pantry... which is supposed to be for pumpkin cake... but I wanted to make him happy.

I've never made pumpkin pie before. I've purchased it many times... but never made it. My plan was to play it safe and just follow Libby's directions on the pumpkin can.

Except I didn't have ground ginger or ground cloves... so here's my franken baker modified ingredients.

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground ginger (franken removed)

1/4 tsp ground cloves (franken removed)

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg (franken added)

1 tsp coco (franken added)

2 eggs

1 can pumpkin

1 can evaporated milk

pie crust (franken wrong - should be deep dish but I only had shallow)

Coconut (franken added)

I got really confused about the pie crust. defrost? don't defrost? bake first?... I ended up defrosting and baking with the filling.

As I've said, I've never made pumpkin pie before and the mixture was much... soupier than I thought it would be. But I poured as much in as I could and then sprinkled coconut around the rim of the pie.

Cooked on 425 for 15min and then on 350 for 35min (franken guessed on cooking time because I didn't use a deep dish crust as called for.)

I must say, it's rather tasty.

So, when I was looking around for substitute flavors for the 2 ingredients I didn't have I thought seriously about peanut butter. Hubby said NO, even frankenstein wouldn't put PB in his pumpkin pie.

But then I found a TON of peanut butter pumpkin pie recipes online while the pie was baking... so maybe franken baker has good instincts?