Baking for a Chemistry Lab.

Our quantitative analysis chemistry lab has someone bring in baked goods every Monday.  This week it's my turn.

Here's what I plan to work with:

Apples
Pumpkin
Gluten-free (someone in the lab is gluten intolerant)

Simple to make for about 18 people.  I hope I'll figure it out soon.

Autumn flavors return

There's something about the autumn that makes my senses and imagination more acute and attuned to certain flavors.


Note that I've yet to make these combinations happen, but I'm convinced that they should work well (in theory at least)...


Here's a few that came to mind:
1) Butternut Squash soup with Curry.
Inspired by the aromas from an Ann Arbor Indian restaurant as I was walking on Maynard and Williams to the UM Undergraduate Library this past Saturday evening (the 29th).


2) Pumpkin+Apple bake (cinnamon is the common denominator for a pie or torte of sorts).


3) Pumpkin pie oatmeal with maple syrup and/or brown sugar. (an idea from last year, I still have yet to make this combination...)


The latter is decidedly very suburban--it was inspired by smelling an instant oatmeal packet being microwaved while I was working at the Engineering Society of Detroit.


Not quite related as I don't see this fitting in with the rest of the flavors or autumn, but this happened today and therefore shall be included in the list:


Pho with something on the side like dried pineapple slices with hummus. 


Dad made the vietnamese soup and I added a little too much Hoisin sauce (mostly sweet and a bit salty). This left me wanting something a bit more grounded, solid, and mellow in flavor.  Dried pineapple and hummus did the trick.

Simple seasonal in theory: pumpkin pie oatmeal

It just occurred to me Tuesday that Pumpkin Pie Oatmeal would make an outstanding seasonal part of my balanced breakfast.

It's an inspiration over simple and familiar ingredients; but the emergent properties are astounding (at least, I think it will be astounding--this is all theory right now).


I've had lots of good oatmeal, but good pumpkin pie is less common. Fortunately, one of my friends made delicious pumpkin pie cupcakes recently and the flavor hadn't left my mind since. After smelling someone's bowl of maple brown sugar oatmeal wafting out of the microwave at work, I finally combined the two flavors in my imagination and reasoned that it could be delicious.

Perhaps next weekend I'll experiment with making this combination. But first--research!