Pumpkin Challenge!

I started out making pumpkin bread.  It was one of those great evenings where I believed that the time was finally mine to bake something fun and relax.  I opened up the 30oz can of pumpkin, dumped it into the bowl.  "Hmm, maybe I should actually find a pumpkin bread recipe," I thought.  After a brief search, I just opened up one online.  Well, it only called for 15oz of pumpkin, so I began doubling.  As I was mixing, I decided that the bread recipe called for too much water.  I have a sense about these things nowadays.  Have you ever tried making something that would never seem to bake all of the way?  Yeah, my pumpkin bread was not going to do that.  The mass of ingredients grew to an enormous lump of goo.  What is this?  I glanced back at the recipe. The original made three loaves of pumpkin bread!  I had the beginnings of six loaves.  It was time to bail on the bread recipe as if from a sinking ship.  Quickly adding more sugar, a bit of this, and bit of that, I made pumpkin cookies!

This was about the time that I suddenly recognized I had a group meeting.  It started a half an hour ago.  Without a second look, I ran out the door with my laptop under my arm to the group meeting.  When I finished the meeting, I returned to the giant bowl full of pumpkin stuff. I baked I had baked pumpkin goods exploding from every surface in the kitchen.

The funny thing is, that as great as everything turned out, I have no idea what was in those cookies except that I started out with a 30oz can of pumpkin.  Our favorite was the pumpkin chocolate chip muffins from the cupcake maker.  This is the great challenge of cooking: be daring!  Try something new!  Be adventurous!