Pumpkin Apricot Cheesecake Brownies

YUM. Brownie on the bottom, cheesecake swirled with homemade pumpkin butter and apricot preserve mixture on the top. SOOO YUM.

Pumpkin Muffins

Ryan and I made these pumpkin muffins this weekend with Aunt Patti's new pumpkin shaped muffin tin. We made two batches, and I think they were all gone within one day. They have an orange sugar glaze, and cream cheese frosting stems and leaves. They were super moist and delicious! I could eat 5 more of these right now with a pumpkin spice latte.

Pumpkin Cake

For my pumpkin cake, I used a tube pan and a recipe from a past issue of Southern Living... or Taste of Home... I can't remember, because I had a whole stack of Fall issues from 2006-on. The cake actually calls for chopped pecans, but I have some family members who aren't big fans, so instead of chopping them and stirring them in, I first filled the tube pan with the pumpkin cake batter, then sprinkled all the chopped pecans on the top, so when it's done baking and you flip it over, it almost makes like a pecan crust, and is easier for those who don't like nuts to eat around.

The ghosts I used to decorate the cake are actually just nutterbutter cookies dipped in some melted white chocolate, and the witches hats are fudge shop cookies with a hersheys kiss on top and an orange butter cream ribbon. Super easy way to jazz up the cake. I also sat some of the extra ghost and witch hat cookies out on a platter just for people to snack on.

Brody's 1st Birthday

This cake was quite a major ordeal. It took a day of baking, and another full day of making our homemade fondant and decorating the cakes. I didn't even get around to making the vanilla cupcakes for the kids until about 10pm the night before the big party!

All in all, we had 3 different flavors of cake: Chocolate coffee cake with peanut butter-butter cream in between each of the 4 layers, Lemon sponge cake with butter cream and homemade strawberry sauce filling in between each of the 4 layers, and vanilla cupcakes with butter cream icing for the kids. Every single thing we made on these cakes were from scratch, and I have to say, they tasted pretty incredible!