The urge to hibernate has been hitting me really hard as the winter days are getting colder and the nights continue to be dark. Some days I feel like I have energy to burn (do ALL the things!) and other days I just want to wrap myself in a warm blanket and plant myself on the couch. Preferably in front of the TV or with a good book and a large mug of tea.

Along with this urge to lounge around comes the desire to eat all things sugary and starchy. We’re really big on comfort food kick right now, with pasta and casseroles being our favourite go-to for supper. Most nights I try to pair it with a kale salad to keep up our vegetable intake, but it’s not always the case. Winter is a weird time and I seem to have misplaced my desire to eat my vegetables even when I know I should be. I’ve even been turning my nose up at the idea of making green smoothies. Who am I and where did the real Jessica go?

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I’m pretty sure I’ve filled my apple baking quota for the year. Of course, we still have a fridge half full of apples, but now I’m setting my sights on my other favourite fall flavour – pumpkin. I only have two other pumpkin recipes on the blog and one of them wasn’t even posted during the fall season. So for the remainder of fall (or at least until it turns bitterly cold), I’m going to attempt some more pumpkin recipes.

I realize now that in saying this, I’m actually cheating a bit on this first recipe. There is no actual pumpkin in these cookies because I wasn’t sure how to combine egg whites and pureed pumpkin and come out with a meringue cookie that was still light, airy and look appealing enough to eat. Instead I made meringue cookies by replacing the white sugar with brown sugar and adding some pumpkin pie spices (cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg). Originally, I was a little worried that the egg whites wouldn’t peak properly because of the higher moisture content in brown sugar verses white sugar, but I was pleasantly surprised when these cookies came together. While they were baking, the kitchen was wafted in a nice pumpkin pie smell and once they cooled, the first bite was sweet and chewy with a crisp outer shell. Perfection.

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Trevor and I had a mild panic attack over the weekend when we logged into our WeddingWire account and the countdown kindly reminded us that it was 20 days until our wedding.

Ummmmm, say what? Seriously where did all this time go? Did we not just celebrate the 4-month before wedding date yesterday? (Not really, but you get the picture).

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Trevor’s birthday was last week and he isn’t much of a cake person to say the least. He will lovingly taste-test most of the cupcakes I make, but I’m usually stuck eating them myself because he finds them too sweet (this is why cake and cupcakes rarely show up on this blog). However, I think this might also have to do with his milk allergy as not too many frosted cake/cupcake recipes are dairy free.

He is, however, a very big fan of desserts involving baked fruit. I didn’t have the ingredients to make a pie, but I did have the ingredients to make Apple Brown Betty.

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Nathan and I made these during my last few days at my parents’ during the holidays.  I think we were all “chocolated” out from Christmas, so these were a nice change of pace for dessert.

I got the recipe from Melissa at Mel’s Sweet Treats and she piped the meringue like one would icing on a cupcake.  I tried to do the same but the batter was a little runny.  According to Nathan, I didn’t beat the egg whites long enough.  Oh well, live and learn!

Nathan used my Mom’s Pampered Chef Easy Accent Decorator, which has a pump to squeeze out the icing in perfect little swirled circles.  He thought he was so clever, but what fun is baking if you can’t get elbow deep in sticky meringue batter?  (I’m still at the learning stages with grasping with the icing piping bag).

My tray was on top and Nathan’s on the bottom.  Despite looking different, they were very delicious and my family gobbled them up.  Only five remained the following morning.

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