Delightful Delectables: Pumpkin Meringue

By: Amy Weinberg

'Tis the season for pumpkin, am I right? In a world where pumpkin rules the months of September, October, and November, blogging without this orange fruit almost felt blasphemous. 

I decided to take a swing at some meringue after seeing an adorable pumpkin meringue recipe online. I've only every experienced meringue on top of pies and didn't even know that it could stand on its own as a cookie. 

Meringue is not as complicated as one may think. With only 4 simple ingredients, the only headache you'll run into is the preparation. As is the case with most baking, patience is key. Patience will transform OK meringue into thick, stiff, beautiful peaks. Patience is something I do not have. 

Along with your patience, the other 4 ingredients you will need are 2 eggs,  1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar, 1/2 cup sugar, and food coloring. 

Step 1: Preheat your over to 275 degrees and place wax paper on a cookie sheet.

Step 2: Separate the yolk from the whites and mix the egg whites in a bowl with the cream of tartar. Beat with an electric mixer on medium-high until stiff peaks begin to form.

**This is when you will find out if you really have patience**

You will beat and beat and beat until you can hardly hold the mixer and you still may not see results. I can't even give you an accurate timeframe of how long it will take for the stiff peaks to form. Let's just say, don't attempt this recipe when you're pinched for time. 

Note: If there is ANY trace of yolk mixed in with the whites, you will not get those highly-covetted stiff peaks. 

Step 3: Slowly (1 teaspoon at a time) beat in all of the sugar until your mixture is stiff and glossy.

Step 4: Gently fold in your food dye and place your mixture into a pastry bag.

Step 5: Step 5 is piping your meringue onto the cookie sheet in a pumpkin form. This is where the recipe lost me. While my peaks were stiff and my meringue was holding, I had no idea how to pipe it into the form of a pumpkin. 

Step 6: Bake your cookies for 40 minutes. Once the 40 minutes is up, turn off your oven, but LEAVE IN your meringue for another hour. 

Some of you may be thinking "Hey Amy, your meringue came out looking not so pumpkin-like, can you eat them at least?"and the short answer is yes. Long answer? I personally put meringue I the same category as fondant: edible for all, enjoyable for few. 

In order to jazz these up a bit and avoid having the cookies look like orange-brown blobs, I decided to use them as a cake topper. I grabbed the closest My Grandma's Pumpkin Spice coffee cake and some cream cheese frosting and went to work. 

All in all, if someone can show me how to make a pumpkin out of meringue, I'll show you a pretty sweet cake topper. 

Delightful Delectables - SUGAR DECORATIONS!

By: Amy Weinberg

Pop Quiz: What is tiny, grainy, and makes everything better?

That's right. Sugar. It is also extremely versatile! It’s hard to find a great dessert without sugar and let me tell you, this one has plenty. I used My Grandma's of New England Lemon Poppy Mini Cakes for this dessert because I want to hold onto this last scrap of Summer.

I figured I would dabble in the art of sugar. Sugar art, that is. Sugar decorations are those things that are super sweet, make a dessert look super elegant, but are surprisingly not super hard to make. 

Let me clarify, the simple ones are not super hard to make. 

All you really need to do to get started is melt a whole bunch of sugar in a saucepan on medium heat. The first decoration I decided to make was the sugar bowl. All you really need to make this stunning decoration is the melted sugar and a ladle. Drizzle the sugar all over the back of the ladle and viola; you can now open your own bakery.

 Depending on how you look at it, you could even turn it into a tiara or The Iron Thrown. 
Go crazy, get creative.

The second decoration would be absolutely perfect for Easter. All you have to do is drizzle the sugar back and forth across a knife sharpener until it starts to collect at the bottom.

String together this nest, drop in a couple a couple of chocolate eggs, and you have a perfect dessert for the kids!

This last decoration was definitely the hardest, but definitely worth it. Don’t be fooled by how nice mine came out. You should have seen the first 3 attempts! The key to this one is purely the temperature of the sugar. The sugar can’t be hard, but it can’t be dripping. You’ll have to be able to wrap the same string of sugar all the way around the bottom of a wooden spoon. Pretty much anything cylindrical will do, I just had to work with what I had. Once you wrap it around your wooden spoon, just break off the tips and GENTLY slide it off. I say GENTLY because one of the first three casualties fell at this stage.

As for the icing, I just whipped up a super easy, SUPER delicious cream cheese frosting. Once everything is ready, just lather on some icing, GENTLY place on your decoration, and prepare to impress all of your guests!

Let Them Eat Cake! Coffee Cake that is.

Delightful Delectables- Colorful Cream Cheese Icing

by Maggie Kelleher

It's dark and rainy outside today. I suppose I should expect it -- it is April -- but I miss the sunshine and could really use some color in my day. So I decided to add some of my own color to the day, with some bright and colorful cream cheese icing. 

Delightful Delectables- Pumpkin Spice Is Ready For Summer

by Maggie Kelleher

Coffee cake. It conjures up images of a December morning snuggle by the fireplace with a steaming cup of coffee, doesn't it? That's all I thought coffee cake was good for too, until I was introduced to My Grandma's of New England. 

In my first week as the new Social Media Intern at My Grandma's I had a large 3 lb Pumpkin Spice coffee cake in my hands and no idea what to do with it. It was summer after all, how do I serve coffee cake in the summer? Luckily, my sister was graduating High School that weekend and we had family coming over, so I knew I had family to share it with. I started brainstorming.