Pumpkin Spice Truffles

It's almost Halloween, and as anyone who follows me on Twitter or Facebook knows, Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year. I was scrolling through recipes this afternoon and came across a recipe on About.com that was so cute I couldn't resist sharing it with you. 

Take a look at these adorable pumpkin truffles: 

Are they cute, or what? 

The recipe says that they're "bursting with flavor from pumpkin puree, cream cheese, cinnamon graham crackers, and plenty of spices." The cream cheese flavor isn't overwhelming, but gives the candies a pleasant cheesecake flavor. I'll post the basic recipe here, but you can find the full thing here:

INGREDIENTS:

• 6 oz white chocolate, chopped (or use chips)
• 2 oz cream cheese, room temperature
• 1/4 cup pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
• 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
• 3/4 cup powdered dry milk
• 3/4 cup powdered sugar
• 1.5 cups graham cracker crumbs (I recommend using cinnamon grahams)
• 1 lb orange colored candy coating
• 3 oz green colored candy coating

Yield 24-30 truffles

preparation:

1. In a small bowl, melt the white chocolate in the microwave in short bursts until it is melted and entirely smooth. Set aside for now.

2. Combine the softened cream cheese and the pumpkin puree in the bowl of a stand mixer and beat until smooth and combined. Scrape the bowl and beat again to make sure there are no lumps in the cream cheese.

3. Add the powdered milk, the powdered sugar, and the pumpkin pie spice. Beat on low until incorporated, then scrape down the mixing bowl and beat on medium speed for 2 minutes, until very smooth.

4. Add the melted white chocolate and mix until incorporated. Finally, stir in the graham cracker crumbs.

5. The mixture will be fairly soft at this point. Press cling wrap on the top and refrigerate it until firm enough to roll, about 2 hours.

6. When the candy is firm, use a candy scoop or a teaspoon to scoop up small balls. Dust your hands with powdered sugar and roll the truffles between your palms to make them round.

7. Melt the orange candy coating in a microwave-safe bowl until melted and fluid.

8. Dip the truffles in the coating, one by one, using dipping tools or a fork. Set them on a foil-lined baking sheet when finished.

9. To make them look more like pumpkins, add a bit of melted chocolate to the remaining orange coating to turn it a darker shade of brownish-orange. Put it in a small plastic bag and snip off a tiny corner. Pipe intersecting lines across the top of the truffles.

10. Finish them off with green leaves: melt the green candy coating and put it in a plastic bag as well. Draw a small swirl on to of each pumpkin truffle to simulate vines or leaves. (Note: There are two #9s in the recipe on the website. I've renumbered here.) 

11. Refrigerate the truffles to set the coating, for about 10 minutes, before serving. Store Pumpkin Spice Truffles in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to two weeks, and bring them to room temperature before serving.

Thinking Ahead to Christmas ...

I can't believe it. This never happens. I'm ready for Christmas a whole week early. I've finished shopping, and I don't even feel as if I've broken a sweat -- probably because I did a whole lot of shopping online this year. Usually, I don't mind getting out in the holiday shopping crowds and sharing all that holiday spirit with a bunch of strangers. I think I'm pretty patient when it comes to standing in lines and fighting over parking spaces. But this year the thought of driving through snow and ice, mincing in and out of the stores without falling, and standing in long lines for the privilege of handing over my hard earned money just had no appeal. And since my daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter live across country and all their gifts had to be shipped anyway, it made logical sense to just order the gifts and let somebody's shipping department take care of getting it there. Ordering online also had the extra benefit of allowing me to avoid the ghastly long lines in the post office. Of course, that means I haven't done a whole lot of wrapping this year, and my daughter and son-in-law are both doing more than their share, but they don't seem to mind, so it's working out okay. Besides, my daughter likes to coordinate the wrapping paper on the gifts under her tree and my haphazard wrapping style always plays havoc with her efforts, so I think she's even a little grateful that most of the gifts coming from me will be properly coordinated this year. Not all of the gifts, of course. My oldest daughter and I did manage to buy a handful of things in person, and we wrapped them in assorted, uncoordinated colors and carted them to the post office a couple of days ago. We packed them into boxes and wound our way through the crowd to stand in a line that made my back ache just looking at it. Then we noticed the do-it-yourself station, and we high-tailed it across the lobby so fast we almost broke our necks getting there. We had to wait for one person to finish putting postage on her packages, spent about 2 minutes printing labels and postage for our boxes, and got out of there before the line we'd been in inched forward by even one person. Great, right? Yeah, except for some reason I don't feel particularly jolly about the holidays this year. Maybe it's because we're not all together this year. Maybe it's because we're all so concerned about being frugal and staying within budget. Finding the gift for someone is much harder when you don't have any financial wiggle room, and I've never liked giving gifts just for the sake of giving a gift. In fact, in my family, the goal each year is to find just the right gift -- the one someone never thought they'd get, the one that makes them cry. The more tears, the better. Everyone else in the family -- brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, parents -- knows what the year's special gift is, and everyone waits with bated breath for the gift to be opened. When you're the recipient of the "Let's Make Her Cry" gift, you sometimes realize in advance that the gift you're about to open is this year's IT gift. Your first clue is that members of the family who have wandered away to change diapers or refresh a drink suddenly scurry back to the tree. The sudden proliferation of cameras is also a clue that the box on your lap may be something special. But even knowing that, even with advance warning, the gift is always something that will take your breath away. Not because it's expensive (although it sometimes is), but because it's so meaningful. I already know what this year's IT gift is. It's the webcam we gave my daughter and son-in-law last Christmas. No, maybe I can't sit in the room with them when they open their gifts, but I can do the next best thing, thanks to technology and a little foresight. Just thinking about that makes me feel a lot more jolly!

Happy New Year!

The hardest thing about blogging to me is coming up with interesting things to say. I mean, I'm quite sure you don't want to hear about how I spent my New Year's Eve. As New Year's Eves go, it was nothing to write home about. New Year's Eve is one of my least favorite holidays anyway, and last night, since I'm fighting a cold, I sat home covered by a blanket and didn't even stay awake until midnight. I haven't made any official resolutions because I'm tired of making resolutions and not keeping them. I'll just keep plugging away at being a better person. One thing I know for certain -- 2008 is going to be a busy year. I'll be traveling to Houston at the beginning of March, Minneapolis at the end of March, Los Angeles at the end of May, and San Francisco at the end of July. I'll be speaking at a writer's conference at Park City in October, and somewhere in between all that I need to find a way to visit the kids in Florida at least once. Speaking of the kids . . . I sent Christmas presents to Vanessa and Abigail at the in-laws house in Missouri via Fed Ex ground, and they still haven't arrived. Now, admittedly, I was pretty late getting them off, and they're not actually Christmas presents as much as tide-them-over-until-we-have-Christmas-in-January presents. But still . . . The whole point of sending tide-them-over gifts was to have them arrive in time for Christmas so the tiding over could begin. When I discovered that sending them Fed Ex overnight would completely drain my checking account, and two-day was almost as bad, I had to settle for ground which, according to my friendly Fed Ex guy, meant they should have been delivered about four days ago. That wasn't really possible, though, since the Fed Ex site says they didn't even leave the state until the day after Christmas. According to the site, the packages are currently on the truck for delivery and would have been delivered yesterday except there was a weather delay. I just hope they actually receive their gifts before they're ready to come home. On the book front, PEPPERMINT TWISTED, the third book in the candy shop series, is in book stores and available to order online now. GOODY GOODY GUNSHOTS, book #4, is with my publisher and in production. I have a terrific idea for the fifth book and I'm busy researching for it now. I can thank my niece's husband for this idea. He was explaining how he hurt his hand skiing the day before Christmas, and before I knew what was happening, I was plotting a murder. Obviously, my Christmas was a lot more interesting than my New Year's! And now, before I sign off for today, I'd like to thank you all for reading about Abby and the folks in Paradise in 2007. I wish you all the best in the coming year!

A Day to be Thankful For

Last night I had one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I held my baby granddaughter for the first time since she was born. I had a one-day window of opportunity a couple of weeks ago, but I was in Dallas on business . . . and the baby wasn't. The very next day the baby contracted an intestinal infection which meant she had to be incubated and intubated until just two days ago, and that meant I couldn't hold her. Yesterday, after the extended family finished Thanksgiving dinner and went our separate ways, my daughters, son-in-law and I went to the hospital and, after all the usual care-taking items were out of the way, Vanessa laid little Abigail in my arms. I've been sitting beside her incubator for the past few weeks, reading to her. We've read "The Baby Blue Cat Who Said No", "Cookie Monster and the Cookie Tree", and "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" several times a week, but when I spoke and her little eyes went wide as if she recognized my voice, I was both surprised and overwhelmed with emotion. I didn't get to hold her for long, but holding her for even 15 minutes was the best thing that's happened to be in a long time, and it was definitely something to be grateful for.

Happy Halloween!