why I shouldn't be cooking

In my last post, I was drooling over lots of autumny baked goods. Sweet potato bourbon bundt cake was the winner. Except...

1. Shockingly, my husband was all out of bourbon. Well, that's not true. There was an unopened bottle of 10-year Pappy Van Winkle but I figured he'd have a mild heartache if I used that. I instead opted for Drambuie, a fortified scotch, which turns out is not that much cheaper. Oops. It did add a lovely warmth to the cake, but next time, I'll make sure we have Maker's Mark.

2. And then I forgot to add the nuts. And the butter seized up into little chunks when I added cold squash puree to the batter. I just shouldn't be cooking. Pregnancy makes it difficult, I'm finding. But the cake still turned out tasty.

Yes, I used cushaw squash puree instead of sweet potato. Why? This 16-pounder is why (the middle one):

Not sure how long the two on the right took to grow, but the one on the left has been growing for 29 weeks.

It's a sweet and tasty winter squash, but I'm thankful it was 10 pounds smaller than the monster we got last year. We ate half with a Moroccan pork stew that I baked in it and then I froze the other half (9 cups of squash puree) for the future.

So back to the bundt, now I'm all caked out and ready to move on to bigger and better things - like PIE. (Edit: I just got back from a pie contest, and having consumed 6 decent slices, I can't really think about any more pie right now. *So full*)

Also craving oatmeal cookies the other day. Lord help me if this baby is giant.