I saw Claire Clark, the executive pastry chef at The French Laundry, demonstrating these gorgeous little spiced pumpkin pots on Market Kitchen last week and thought to myself… what a great dessert for Autumn! And then realised that this would also be the perfect thing to make for this month’s Sugar High Friday and Waiter… there’s something in my… gourd.

All three of us are big fans of pumpkin and squash, so it surprises me to realise that this is the first dessert I’ve ever made with them.  I’m sure it won’t be the last, though.  Dave keeps gently hinting that he’d quite like a pumpkin pie and after tasting these pots de creme I’m rather keen on the idea, too.

For the cuteness factor, I decided to serve the pots de creme in little Munchkin pumpkins.  I spotted them in the supermarket and had to pick them up as (a) I couldn’t resist the name and (b) they were so small and cute.  The flesh of the Munchkin is quite tasty, but to be honest… there are more seeds than flesh, so I wouldn’t go out of my way to eat them again.  However, they do make a fantastic edible serving dish for the pots de creme!

I did manage to save some Munchkin flesh—that just sounds wrong, doesn’t it?—for the custard, but the bulk of the pumpkin flavour comes from my favourite (and ever-reliable) butternut squash.  I know pumpkin and squash are subtly different, but we always have a butternut about the house and they’re delicious!  Excuses aside, the custard is generously spiced with cinnamon, ginger and freshly grated nutmeg which gives you a wonderful gingerbread taste before the sweetness of the squash comes through.  This is a sexy little dessert that is just sweet, seasonal and perfect if you’re planning some sort of Halloween shindig!

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This month’s Sugar High Friday theme is Sweet Seduction. How could I resist? (A slight tangent, but I can’t believe we’re up to the 28th edition of SHF already!)

In designing this cupcake, I was trying to capture some of the spirit of our honeymoon in Grenada. Wherever we went on the island, the air was redolent with nutmeg, and many of the dishes–sweet and savoury–we devoured were flavoured with the spice. The Grenadians make good use of the whole fruit–instead of gravel, paths were covered with the dried husks and the chef at our hotel specialised in caramelised nutmeg pods. Delicious!

Aside from nutmeg, we ate rather a lot of the local chocolate, so I was keen to combine the two flavours. But how best to marry them without one overpowering the other and without resorting to vanilla? The answer was simple: almonds.

This cupcake is a classic example of the whole being greater than the individual components. (Am I mixing my metaphors?) But I’m pretty happy with the results. The caramel ganache (from Pierre Herme’s Chocolate Desserts) wasn’t quite what I expected–I thought that the caramel would dominate it, but instead it enhanced all the complicated flavours of the dark chocolate–but it worked wonderfully with the nutmeg of the cupcakes. The almond provided a subtle smoothness which was only discernible after the topnote of the nutmeg had faded. Definitely one for adults-only, in my opinion, due to the complexity of the flavour.

By happy coincidence, nutmeg, almonds and chocolate are all reputed to be aphrodisiacs. Perfect for a Valentine’s Day cupcake….

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I love Creme Caramel and seriously considered making it for this month’s Sugar High Friday, as hosted by Debbie. It just seemed a little pedestrian and obvious; I was therefore delighted when I stumbled across Flan, the Mexican version of Creme Caramel.

Like creme caramel, there are hundreds of recipes for Flan online. I ended up picking a recipe from Cooking Light and adapting it to a high-fat version. I wonder if I’ll go to hell for that? In fairness to CL, I did try out their low-fat dulce du leche–it worked but didn’t taste very nice, so I whipped out a can of full-fat condensed milk and made the real stuff. According to some of the recipes I’ve read online, a lot of Mexican’s make their Flan using condensed milk, but caramelising it to form dulce du leche seems to be unique to CL’s recipe.

The texture of the flan was superb–silky smooth, rich and dense–with the dulce du leche contributing bags of flavour and much of the denseness of the texture. Don’t let the bubbly edge in the picture put you off; inside the flan is amazingly smooth and a beautiful deep amber. I’ll definitely be making this again. Once the dulce du leche is made, it’s a snap to put together.

Thanks for hosting, Debbie, and coming up with such a great theme! I had fun.

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It’s time for another edition of “Sugar High Fridays”, the sweet-toothed sister event to “Is My Blog Burning?”. This month’s theme is very seasonal, apples!

My first thought was baked apples stuffed with mincemeat (I’m still working my way through a huge jar), but then I remembered coming across an article on Amish Apple Dumplings which sounded both simple and delicious. The apples are filled with a mixture of butter and sugar, then baked within the confines of a pastry shell. I suppose it’s rather like an individual apple pie…. Dave was quite keen on the idea too, so that settled it.

There are quite a lot of recipes for baked apple dumplings online; after looking at a few it all got rather bewildering. So, I made up my own.

The apples were gorgeous; really sweet, buttery, juicy and spicy. The pastry kept almost all the juices in and surprisingly it didn’t go soggy! I don’t think there was quite enough spicing though, so next time I’d probably up the spice mix to a full teaspoon. We ate the apples with plenty of single cream, but it would be equally as nice with vanilla ice-cream, maple syrup or a butterscotch sauce. I’m looking forward to investigating the possibilities!

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