PotW: Brown butter pumpkin pancakes with bourbon cream

[last time's PotW: Bananas about pancakes!]

Nothing's quite as quintessentially autumn as pumpkin.  (Ironically, a winter squash? bizarre.)  Okay, maybe butternut squash, but really, I just lump those two in the same category.  This week, I had pumpkins! left over from Halloween--I was a wimp and didn't carve mine.  And then my mom came to visit and deposited two beautiful organic sugar pumpkins here as well.  So, with all the pumpkin madness, I had to give pumpkin pancakes another go.

Brown butter pumpkin pancakes

with bourbon mascarpone whipped cream

Actually, I made pumpkin pancakes a few weeks back right when thoughts of Halloween, fall, and cooling weather reminded me of the upcoming pumpkin season.  But these pumpkin pancakes this time around were quite different.  First of all, I made my own pumpkin puree.  I actually--surprisingly so--haven't done that before because it's just been so much more convenient in the past to just buy cans of pumpkin puree.  But since I had so many pumpkins on my hands this time around, I couldn't avoid it!  Second, pumpkin takes quite a back seat to the flavor of browned butter, spices, and bourbon in these pancakes.

Instead of tasting the pumpkin as a foregrounded ingredient, it sort of lurks in the background, really providing more of a texture than anything else.  And the texture of these pancakes were really their selling point!  The homemade pumpkin puree, along with the brown butter, gave these pancakes a sort of chewy-melt-in-your-mouth cake-iness that isn't usually all too present in most pancakes.  It also didn't hurt that Maria--my roommate, who did the frying-up of these cakes this time while I whipped the cream, made them nice and thick.  I definitely recommend following her example.  The bourbon in the cream lends a zing in the finishing touches--though, be careful not to go overboard with the alcohol like I did.  (oops! :-P)  Top with a sprinkle of cinnamon or freshly ground nutmeg, and it's a perfect stack of pancakes and flavors for the cooling fall weather.

Read on for recipe and directions for making pumpkin puree and browned butter.

Nostalgia in cookie form: Oreos

It's the continuation of sandwich cookies!  :-)

Rosemary-lemon sandwich cookies

Classic chocolate-vanilla oreos

So the other type of sandwich cookie that I made for Ting's birthday package (read about it here!) were good ol' chocolate vanilla oreos.  I figured that these would provide a homey and comforting contrast to the more "out-there" rosemary and lemon cookies that I was including in the box.

Ah--and many of you are probably wondering: why in the world are these cookies purple?  Well, purple is Ting's favorite color, so I had to incorporate it somehow.  :-)

All Gone!

Read on for recipe...