Happy Birthday, Blog!

Today is my blog's first birthday.  It is hard to believe it's already been a year since I started this.  And it's hard to believe how different things are now.  Wow, can a lot change in a year.  I was living with six other girls in an apartment as an undergrad, not even dating anyone, and well, preparing for student teaching.  Now, I'm in grad school, engaged, and working on my doctorate.  And not in education.  Yup.  Things can change in a year, can't they?  Happy birthday, blog!

And I didn't even have time to make a birthday cake today.  Unfortunate.  Well, only partially unfortunate.  The fact that homework kept me from baking this morning: unfortunate.  The fact that wedding dress shopping kept me from baking this afternoon: not unfortunate.

The closest thing I could do was some baking earlier this week when I actually had time in my life.  This week both began and ended very differently than I expected.  The beginning of the week being less stressful was good.  The end getting more stressful than normal, not so much.

But, regardless.  I had time to bake.  I was blogging and decided I wanted to bake.  And I had everything for granola.  And granola is pretty quick and easy.  And I might just have been wanting to try making pumpkin granola for a couple of weeks.  Just maybe.

And the result: it smelled wonderful in my apartment for about two days afterwards, it is good granola, but it just doesn't taste as pumpkiny as I had hoped.

So, instead of adding apple juice, like I normally would, I added about 1/3 cup of pumpkin puree.  And when I realized that it might make be kind of cakey (this granola recipe tends to be cakey to begin with) with all that pumpkin in it, I did add a little bit of apple juice just to make sure it didn't end up like pumpkin crisp.  It did come out a really good consistency, but it was not all that strongly pumpkin.  Maybe next time I'll try without the juice and adding a pinch of salt.  See if salt changes the taste at all.  I also used ginger, ground cloves, allspice and cinnamon for spices. Yeah, I have no idea how much I added.  I winged it.

I really thought that I wanted to add Craisins, but I was afraid they would take over the whole flavor.  I wanted the little bit of pumpkin to shine through.

End result, fall tasting granola.  But not necessarily as much pumpkin as anticipated.  Up for another try?  Definitely.