Election Day Treats

Election Day has come and gone (finally). While I love politics, I must admit that this campaign season dragged on for longer than I would've liked. This was, however, my first election year living in the District and I was excited to see how the city celebrated the night. The night before the election I was abuzz like a kid on Christmas and needed a way to busy my idle hands. Enter baking. And since, despite the recent cold snap, there's still one month of fall remaining, I turned to my pile of pumpkin recipes to find the perfect treat to craft. 

During our hurricane hiatus from the office last week I finally got around to trying to roast a pumpkin in my crock pot. This had been a longstanding dream of mine for sometime, and I was beyond ready for the pie pumpkins that were taking up space on my counter to be gone. At least twice I'd tried to saw them, but to no avail. Thus, you can imagine my elation when I discovered I could literally stick the whole pumpkin in the crock pot, wait for a couple hours, and bam---pumpkin is cooked and finally soft enough to cut into! Best recipe discovery ever!

Once cut into, it was super easy to scoop out the seeds for roasting 

The rest was scooped out and put in a bowl for pureeing 

Enter hand mixer for pureeing and voila, fresh pumpkin puree for cooking and baking!

Dressed in a little olive oil and kosher salt, the pumpkin seeds were put to good use as well

I used my homemade puree in creating my election night treats:

Oatmeal Pumpkin Creme Sandwiches

Original recipe thanks to Sally's Baking Addiction

Ingredients [cookies]

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
• 3/4 cup dark brown sugar
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 and 2/3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
• 1 cup all-purpose flour

Ingredients [frosting]

• 4 oz cream cheese, softened to room temperature
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
• 1/4 cup pumpkin puree
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground ginger, 1/4 tsp ground cloves, 1/4 tsp nutmeg (or 3/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice)
• 2 – 2 1/2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
• 1/4 cup flour (to thicken, as needed)

Ready to go in the oven

Preparation

1. In a large bowl of a stand mixer with paddle attachment or with a handheld mixer, cream the softened butter and sugars until smooth. Add the egg and vanilla and mix well
2. Slowly stir in the baking soda, cinnamon, oats, and flour. Mix together until just combined. Do not overmix
3. Chill the dough for at least one hour in the fridge. Cookies will be very flat if the dough is not cold
4. Preheat oven to 325 F 
5. Roll 2 teaspoons of dough into a ball and drop onto parchment paper covered baking sheet. Bake for 9 minutes [cookies will appear underdone, but will firm up with cooling] and let cool on baking sheet for a minute or two before transferring to a wire rack
6. While the cookies are cooling, prepare the pumpkin frosting. Using a handheld or stand mixer with a paddle attachment, mix the cream cheese, butter, pumpkin, and spices on medium speed until creamy.  Add 2-2.5 cups of sifted powdered sugar depending how sweet you’d like it.  If frosting is much too thin, add in the flour to thicken it
7. Spread a generous amount of frosting on the underside of a cooled cookie and sandwich another cookie on top

Assembled and ready to be devoured. I chilled them after assembly to keep them from sliding during transportation and it worked well (they thawed out fast too)