I keep forgetting that this is Thanksgiving week. Maybe it’s because I lost a week due to the flu, but I feel like my holiday circadian rhythm is all off. To rectify this, I figured baking with pumpkin puree would get me back on track.

But plain old pumpkin bread struck me as a little mundane, and pumpkin pie was more commitment than I was willing to pony up. Then I spotted the over-ripe bananas on the counter and immediately Googled “pumpkin banana bread”. This recipe sounded promising, so out came all the ingredients.

As it so happens, Trader Joe’s was having a big sale on vanilla beans so last week, I’d scooped a couple packages up at this hitherto unheard of price of $3.99 per pack of two. The recipe is very adamant about the vanilla bean glaze, and now that I’ve sampled the bread/cake, I have to agree. It adds a flourish of fancy visually, but also amps up the flavor of the pumpkin-banana blend. You definitely don’t want to skip the glaze (though I didn’t add a full tablespoon of the paste – more like a teaspoon).

The only change I made was to add 1/4 cup of Greek yogurt. I had three bananas which is what the recipe calls for, but somehow one disappeared while I went to go run an errand before tackling the baking – these disappearances happen a lot in our household. The yogurt was a good move, and the bread has a lovely texture that’s not exactly fluffy but not dense either. It tastes like holiday cheer to me, which was exactly what I needed. Delish.

If I had a Native American name, it would be She-Who-Does-Not-Cease-To-Cough. No miracle bounce-back for me yet, but I am straining against my nature and resting a lot. The good news is that my appetite is back and I’m chowing down all the food groups and so far, they’re staying where they should.

Now that I can look at food again without gagging, I remembered that last week, K hosted a mini tea party for her best friend at our house. American Girl dolls included, naturally. I was their “servant” (“Server!” I kept correcting them, but in the end, is there really a difference?), so I was busy attending to the ladies and didn’t have much of a chance to snap photos but I got a few. I do wish I’d photographed how the whole thing looked altogether, but that’s the way things shake out these days. The idea of the party was heavily modeled after this place, where K had gone for a birthday party recently. Ah, the privileged life that my child leads…anyway, she enthusiastically wrote out the “menu” on our kitchen chalkboard wall as you see above.

We didn’t really gussy up the place too much, but did add a felt flower garland that I’d made many, many years ago for a birthday party. It’s held up surprisingly well, and it’s come in handy for these types of impromptu parties.

K has quite a few tea sets, but they get rarely used for some reason so they are in near-pristine condition. Not a chipped teacup nor sugar bowl to be seen.

I already had plans to make apple muffins, but K was insistent on brownies, so I thought it would be sweet to make brownie cookies. The open-faced sandwiches sat forlornly untouched, I should mention.

The star of the party ended up being the brownie cookies. The girls ate a worrying number of them, and I had to nix the Japanese candy and also surreptitiously put away the apple muffins. I think K just wanted to show off the cute tins of the candy, anyway. They’re a gift from my mom from her recent trip to Japan. The bigger one holds green tea, and the smaller one, candy.

So time to share the recipes! Both the muffins and cookies came out fantastic and were so easy to make.

I used this recipe for the apple muffins. For the topping, I simply used a little sprinkling of brown sugar instead of the butter-sugar-cinnamon mix.

As for the coin-sized brownie cookies, these were dangerously addictive! I used this recipe, but I took a chance and mixed it up my own way to save time. Luckily, they turned out perfect. I basically melted chocolate (I used chocolate chunks from Trader Joe’s) with the butter in the microwave, added the sugar, eggs, then the flour-baking-powder mixture. I scooped out small teaspoon fulls on to the baking sheet and baked for approximately 7 to 8 minutes. The result? Crackly and crisp on the outside, chewy on the inside, incredibly chocolate-y, with a hint of caramel. Sigh. I think I need to make some more now.

P.S. Still no sewing! I am bummed!!

There’s only so much couch-sitting and reading a seven-year-old can handle, and during the many days K stayed home from her illness last week, she kept trying to come up with ways to entertain herself. Of course, I didn’t want to make staying home from school too fun for her, or I knew I would suffer the consequences.

One day she asked if we could bake something. “Sure,” I said, getting ready to look up recipes. “No, I want to make up my own recipe,” she stated firmly.

And so she did. She plucked out a couple of Hershey’s bars from her Halloween candy stash, commandeered the kitchen and assembled flour, eggs, sugar and baking powder. I guess she’s been observing me bake all these years. The only parts I helped with were melting the chocolate and butter, pouring the batter into the muffin tin and placing it in the oven, but basically I let her run free.

We made them into mini-muffins and you know what? They were good! I mean, really good. With just a hint of chocolate-y goodness, they were sweet without being sickly so, and baked to perfection.

I wish I had taken a photo of her “recipe” she had written on our chalkboard wall, complete with charming misspellings. I’m sure there will be more concoctions, though, so I’ll capture it next time…who knows, maybe K will be penning her own cookbook in a few short years…

Though I don’t have a specific set of ingredients for these little beauties that K created, I think these or these or these would be wonderful to bake.