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Hiya buddy (Office reference), how are you? Did you have a good week?
Cam and I were both sick most of the week, but we’re finally on the upswing. I didn’t have energy to do anything for about 5 days. Once it came back, I started making some pumpkin treats that I want to share with you!
Today’s newsletter agenda:
Two (more) kid games
Pumpkin recipes!
Great British Baking Show technical challenge
Minute Cryptic
A couple life updates
More gift ideas (I’ll sprinkle these throughout upcoming newsletters!)
Two (more) kid games
Last week I shared the “secret word” kid game. This week I’ve got two more ideas for you! I love the kind of game you can play with multiple ages, without materials, basically anytime and anywhere.
Say the same word as me. Once again I’ve got no idea what this is called. This works better with older kids - for example, Charlie’s too little. But Annabelle and Alexander will play sometimes with me. It’s very fun with me and Cam, since we’re on the same wavelength usually!
You need 2 people. Together, you say “3, 2, 1” and, at the same time, shout out a word. It can be a noun or verb or adjective. Let’s say that one person says YELLOW and the other person says OCEAN. So now, you both think, “What’s a word that is smack dab in the middle of ‘yellow’ and ‘ocean’, a word that can start to connect them somehow?” Once you’ve both got your new word, you say “3, 2, 1” and your new word. Let’s say, SUN (it’s yellow and you can see it from the ocean) and SUBMARINE (like the Beatles song, and subs are in the ocean) are the two words. You both keep trying to move closer and closer together until you shout the same word at the same time. (What would you say next? What’s between SUN and SUBMARINE? There’s no right or wrong answer; I’m just curious!)
If you need a demonstration of this, you can search on TikTok or wherever “say the same word game”!
Name that tune. This is just a spin on that classic game show. The way the kids and I play this is by HUMMING. It is actually so tricky to recognize a song just by humming. One person hums a song and the rest of us “buzz in” to guess the song!
Pumpkin recipes
I went a little pumpkin crazy this week (and will keep going until I run out of puree).
First I made mini pumpkin Swiss rolls. I followed this recipe for the cake part except that I cut the recipe in half. I still spread the batter onto a lined baking sheet, and it was VERY thin (you can see how thin the cake is in the picture!). It worked perfectly though since I wanted mini rolls. (The half recipe made 5 mini rolls.) My filling was a combo of cream cheese, butter, whipping cream, and pumpkin pie spices. Once they were rolled and chilled, I dipped them in melted white chocolate. They were great!
Second I made some pumpkin cookie butter no-bake cheesecakes. OH MY. I’m making these again ASAP! I did not measure anything, but I combined roughly these ingredients:
½ cup cream cheese
½ cup cookie butter
2 tbsp heavy cream
½ tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
a pinch of salt
Then I spooned that into some mini graham cracker crusts. Once they chilled for an hour, they were outstanding!
Next I made some pumpkin bagels. They turned out pretty dang cute, but they didn’t taste like pumpkin. A few folks mentioned that, because we always add the same spices to pumpkin recipes, without those flavors, you don’t even taste the pumpkin (it’s like they MUST go together). Measurements are approximate!!🫣
Add 1 tbsp active dry yeast to 1 cup warm water + 1 tbsp brown sugar, in a large bowl (or your stand mixer bowl). Let it bloom.
Add 1 cup pumpkin puree, 1 tsp salt, and 3-4 cups of flour.
Mix until all the flour is combined. I added a little extra flour twice, so the total was probably around 4 cups.
Knead in the mixer about 5 min or by hand for more like 10. It should be tacky but not sticky.
Let rise until doubled (about an hour).
Separate into 6 pieces. Form a basic bagel shape with them. If you aren't making them look like pumpkins, make a big hole in the middles! (If you're making stems, set aside some dough for that.)
Let them rest while you preheat oven to 450F AND bring some water to boil.
Add 1 tbsp brown sugar to the pot. Boil them for 20-30 sec/side then place on parchment lined baking sheet.
Brush w egg wash.
Bake about 15 min.
NOTES: (1) If I were to make these again, I’d add a few pumpkin pie spices! (Someone else suggested adding pumpkin extract!) (2) Your dough is ready to rest when you can press a finger into it, and it bounces back pretty much right away. (3) You can speed up your rise time by placing the dough, covered, into your oven with the oven light on (don’t turn on the heat). (4) I weighed my dough before separating it. Each piece was 132 grams, if that’s useful to know! (5) If you plan to make them look like pumpkins, coat your kitchen twine in oil or flour to keep it from sticking. Wrap it LOOSELY around as many times as you want before tying it off. When it rests again, the twine will create subtle indents, rather than the deep ones I did! (6) If you make stems separately like I did, just shove a small knife into the centers (after they’re baked) and shove the stems in. 😄 You could use a pretzel rod or cinnamon stick for a stem as well!
What’s a pumpkin recipe you think I should make next?
GBBO technicals
Do you watch the Great British Baking Show (aka the Great British Bake Off)? I go through periods where I just binge it, and then I forget about it and miss a whole season. I love getting flavor and presentation ideas from the contestants!
And I LOVE the technicals. I think I’d be quite good at them! I’ve tried making a couple technicals in the past - the s’mores were actually SO good. I’ll see if I can find a picture of the ones I made a couple years ago!
Recently, Prue (one of the hosts) had the contestants make Chocolate Caramel Hobnobs. There was ONE ingredient listed that stumped me, so I just skipped that part. In the chocolate section, it lists “caramel chocolate” which I am guessing is caramel chips? But it really is just to make the lighter cookies you see in the picture. I just made the darker chocolate ones shown. Here’s my attempt!
They were delicious! My caramel layer wasn’t quite thick enough because I did not have the proper size mold: it mentions this in the recipe, but you need a 7cm cookie cutter AND a 7cm mold… I only had a 10cm mold. When I pressed my 7cm cookie into the 10cm of caramel, it just made that caramel layer quite thin. Does that make sense?
The cookies themselves (the biscuit part) are delicious. They reminded me of Anzac biscuits (an Australian cookie!), which are another great recipe to make!
Minute Cryptic
I fear this will only be interesting to about 3 of you, so I’ll try to keep it short and sweet!
If you’ve never played Minute Cryptic, it’s a daily clue game. Every cryptic clue is a puzzle broken into two parts: the definition and the wordplay. The wordplay is usually two parts: fodder (words you’ll play around with) and indicators (words that tell you how to play with the fodder). The hardest part is figuring out which words are the definition, fodder, and indicators!
A fun recent clue was this:
Spain’s and France’s and Italy’s earliest hairy humanoid (4)
(The 4 at the end just means that the answer is 4 letters.)
The word “earliest” is an easy indicator: it means you’ll take the first part of a neighboring word.
The way it’s written is odd… it isn’t written as “Spain’s, France’s, and Italy’s” so you have to wonder, why did they add the extra “and.”
If you break it down left to right, you have “Spain’s and.” How do you say AND in Spain? (It’s just the letter Y.)
Then it’s “France’s and.” How do you say AND in France? (It’s just ET.)
And then “Italy’s earliest” means just the beginning of Italy. In this case, we just need one more letter - the letter I.
Put it together, and you have YETI, which is a hairy humanoid.
So if that sounds fun to you, you should try it! Each day is slightly different and isn’t always very obvious. A and AB do it with me each day because they see things differently than I do and, together, we usually figure it out!
A few life updates
Literally this is going to be super quick, but I just wanted to tell you a couple things!
This month, both my mom and brother have a birthday. In fact, my youngest brother’s is today (happy bday Wes!). And he just became a dad for the second time, a few weeks ago. ❤️
We THINK we’re heading to the beach in a few weeks. I need to check online to see the water temperature - I feel like it’s been warmer this year, which means it may still be nice. I’d hate to drive all the way there and then not get to enjoy the water at all (although, the kids will anyway… what is it with kids and not being bothered by cold pool or ocean water?! Or is that just my kids?).
More gift ideas
There are a lot of options for grips you can put on your phone. Pop Sockets are popular, but I LOVE Love Handles. I’ve been using them 7-8 years now! I’ve tried similar brands, but they just weren’t as comfy. They’re $10 for the original, which is what I use.
Another gift idea is one of those chargers where the cables retract! I don’t have one, but I want one. 🙂
My kids play a make-believe game nearly every day - for years. They have inside jokes and characters and a made-up language. Mostly A and AB but Charlie knows a little bit now. So one gift for them is customized Thing 1 and Thing 2 shirts but, instead of “Thing 1” or “Thing 2” it will say their made-up names from their make-believe world. I think they will get a kick out of it. SO the idea I have here is to get something customized!
We have two versions of a custom name book - one for Alexander and one for Annabelle. It’s a VERY cute story, and I think we’ll get a Charlie one this year! It’s called The Little Boy Who Lost His Name (or The Little Girl Who Lost Her Name). It’s $39.99USD- you can preview the whole book before you purchase it. I love both of them!
I’ve not played this game, but it was mentioned to me on IG a while back. And now it’s on my wish list! It’s called Know Me If You Can, and it’s a family game!
One more little thing
If you find these emails helpful or interesting, please forward them to a friend!
Okay that’s it. As usual, feel free to reply to this email if you have any feedback or ideas or anything. You can also click here to “buy me a coffee,” which is my virtual tip jar!
Other than that, hope you have a good weekend and week. I’ll talk to you real soon.
❤️ Bethany