Foodie Friday: Baked Pumpkin Donut Holes and Pumpkin Chai Tea

I've decided to start a new segment of my blogging. Foodie Friday! I'm sure this concept isn't new and since that's the case, I make no claims that this is something I've made up on my own and hold idea ownership over. It was one of those "hey they both start with F." More than likely they will be recipes I've tried myself, but I'm sure that sometimes they will be food I've tried in restaurants or other places. Either way, post for food = win.

To kick off this new aspect of my blogging, what better way than to try out pumpkin recipes!
I admit, I'm starting to go pumpkin crazy! I had been resisting it for a while, but being invited to a brunch was the perfect excuse to look for some way to indulge in pumpkin delight.

The first recipe is the donut holes: linked here.

And the second is the pumpkin chai tea: linked here.
Since the pumpkin chai tea is pretty simple, I omitted taking progress pictures.

The first step is the dry ingredients! I had to take a trip to the store to get some I didn't have (nutmeg, allspice, cloves), but otherwise the dry ingredients are pretty easy to come by or have on hand.

I should have made a face...

The next step is the wet ingredients in a separate bowl. Again, mostly basic or easy to come by ingredients.

Sexy.

All mixed up and much better!

Then you mix the dry into the wet.

Mixed and ready for scooping into tins!

Because this recipe uses mini-muffin pans, I expected the batter to be a lot more liquidy. Thankfully, it wasn't and I was able to use regular-sized muffin tins and measure and shape each dough ball.

They don't have to worry about overcrowding at least.

I baked them between 8-10 minutes. My first batch, I made much larger ones and baked for at least 10 minutes (I also only made 24, while cutting the portion size down gave me 36 this time. Or more really as I decided to just split some more of the leftover dough between them for the last batch.)

They look like chicken nuggets.

They cooled pretty quickly and the last step was just dipping them in butter and then in the cinnamon and sugar mixture.

Mmmmm~

The only sweetness within the dough itself is from the light brown sugar so without the cinnamon and sugar mixture, it's a very nice and not overly sweet treat. Paired together my with pumpkin chai tea, it makes for the perfect brunch or afternoon treat.

:)

Growing nail polish collection

I've never really been big into nail care. I've had fake nails a couple of times, and didn't mind them while I had them, but they aren't really my thing. Although this might be changing as a explore those ready-made fake nails rather than gel ones, whatever they're actually called.

Since I'm not really into nail care though, I haven't suffered too much since our stuff still isn't here. But lately (and especially after a job interview I had) I've bought more and more things for my nails. I even actually file and shape my nails instead of just cutting them down when they get too long (what is the world coming to).

My little collection of nail things grew rapidly one day when I bought nail polish remover and 5 different nail polish colors! Granted, I bought them because I was trying to do the whole galaxy or universe look on my nails (which didn't turn out so great because I'm untalented).

So what started out as two, then three, quickly grew to eight!

Colors!

I haven't properly used the pink and purple yet, but I'm very tempted. Currently I have my left hand nails painted white all white and my right hand nails painted metallic (the two Rimmel colors in the upper right). I actually quite like this look too!  But Halloween is soon so I think I need to orange and yellow and brown to my brigade. ;D

The felting journey continues!

My orange pumpkin has a buddy! Since I'm still limited in colors, but wanting to do more Autumn-type things, I decided to do another squash. I basically had the perfect colors for this thing so that makes me glad. 

It's called a kabocha and is well, basically the Japanese version of a pumpkin!

Since the inside is pretty different from the outside, I decided to do more a cut look to get the different colors there. I have to say I'm actually impressed with what I've done so far. 

The owl aside... Hahah!

Pumpkin buddies!