Brunch with friends old and new

A  couple of months ago, my good friend and new mommy, Diana and I decided we needed to get friends together and cook for them.  Both of us are good cooks (if we do say so ourselves) and enjoy entertaining.  Also, Diana hasn't shown off her 6 month old baby Bryan to everyone yet.  So we decided to throw a little brunch get together today.  It went so well!  We cooked but it never felt like work, we cleaned up but did it together so it went by quickly.  Cooking and eating (and even clean up) is way better with company!

Here are a few pics of the goodies:

Dorie Greenspan's mushroom and shallot quiche (I added spinach) and berries with honeyed greek yogurt

Ina Garten's Cape Cod Salad

Crispy and flavorful potato hash and fragrant pumpkin muffins served with honey butter

moist and delicious buttermilk raspberry cake

Great girls, delicious food and a great afternoon.  I was excited to make pumpkin muffins (again) and decided to make them a little healthier - knocked out about 1/2 the oil and more than 1/3 of the sugar... still ended up delicious, without the guilt!  We ended up keeping the meal pretty light and none of us felt too full afterwards. We provided the right combination of sweet and savory.

I got the recipe from Kirbie's Cravings and when I just went to her site to pull the recipe up, I noticed that she has post titled CINNAMON SUGAR PUMPKIN DONUT MUFFINS... Aaaaaaah I gotta try those next!  !!!  Anyway, here is the recipe and I've noted in bold italics any changes I made.

Pumpkin Bread

(Kirbie says this makes 3-7x3 loaves... I say it makes 2-9x5 loaves OR 24 muffins OR 1 9x5 loaf and 12 muffins)

Ingredients

  1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree

  4 eggs

   1 cup vegetable oil (i used 1/2 cup oil, 1/2 cup no sugar added apple sauce)

   2/3 cup water

  3 cups white sugar (I used 1 c brown sugar, 2/3 cup white sugar - consistency didn't change at all)

   3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

   2 teaspoons baking soda

  1 1/2 teaspoons salt

    1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (I used a heaping teaspoon of cinnamon)

   1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

   1/2 teaspoon ground cloves (I used a pinch - probably 1/2 tsp... not a huge clove fan)

    1/4 teaspoon ground ginger (I didn't have ginger so left it out)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour three 7×3 inch loaf pans. (see above for other pan options)
2. In a large bowl, mix together pumpkin puree, eggs, oil, water and sugar
   until well blended. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour,
   baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. Stir the dry
   ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended. (I usually use the hand mixer here for a little bit because my flour mixture always clumps.  I only mix it until most of the clumps are out.) Pour into the prepared pans.
3. Bake for about 50 minutes in the preheated oven. Loaves are done when
   toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

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What are some of your favorite brunch foods?  Feel free to share with me here!

Chow for now!  :)