In which I sound a little crazy (perhaps it's the thought that Christmas Eve is tomorrow):

To all potential samplers, who knew I was planning to make doughnuts today:

In the process of making pumpkin pie and pumpkin-experiment-that-has-no-name-yet, large messes have been created in the lab, and great amounts of time expended. Doughnut-making has been tentatively pushed to the day after Christmas. However, we wish to thank all our well-wishers for the well-wishing, as well as for all hopeful sniffs and comments along the lines of "yum!"

That pumpkin experiment has yet to be tasted. Actually, both the pie and the experiment are experiments.

I used fresh pumpkin. Baked it, mashed it, added brown sugar, cinnamon, and allspice. It looked stringy, so I put it in the mixer to be whipped, and went to make a crumb crust out of crushed gingersnaps and melted butter. I did a lot of sampling during that process. :)

Then I melted half a pack of cream cheese and added it to the pumpkin.

Then I started wondering if using a whole pumpkin was a little much for one pie. Oh well; too late to worry about that now!

Then I added two eggs, and a little more sugar...taste-testing the whole time.

Then I filled the crust with the pumpkin mixture, and put it in the oven. Not wanting to spoil the adventure of all this haphazard (ahem, I mean adventurous) baking, I didn't even set the oven timer.

I still had about 1/3 of the pumpkin mix left. I added 1/2 cup milk, ground flax seed, and lemon juice, and added it to 1 and a half cups of flour, plus 2 tsp. of baking powder. I should have stuck with just 1 cup of flour; I had to add more milk to make a nice batter.

As I stirred everything together, I felt very adventuresome and confident. Who knew what the results of this combo would be? I poured it all in a greased cake pan, let it set for four minutes, and popped it into a 350-degree oven until..it looked done. 20 minutes, I think.

Both dishes are now sitting on the counter cooling, waiting to be sampled some time tomorrow. I have no idea what they'll taste like, but I sure am thankful for a mother who will let me go crazy in her kitchen!

The pioneer spirit of adventure hangs heavily over me tonight. Look out, world!