Pig n' Pumpkin

With October being National Pork Month, I figured it was once again my patriotic duty to slow cook a dry-rubbed pork shoulder for 10 hours and eat it over the course of a week.

I went the pulled pork sandwich route similar to last year, and I feel it was once again the right decision.

In the spirit of October and Halloween and canned pumpkin being on sale at the grocery store each week, I've been on a torrent of making pumpkin based desserts. To start, multiple dozens of pumpkin cookies have been baked (and consumed too quickly for photographic evidence). Ever since making marshmallows for various camping trips over the summer, I had been toying with the idea of doing some flavored marshmallows, and felt that a pumpkin pie flavored marshmallow would do the trick.

I used some tiny cookies cutters to create the various leaf and pumpkin shapes. Definitely more difficult to punch out shapes from a sheet of marshmallow rather than a sheet of sugar cookie dough.

Following my first attempts at basic cake decorating with marzipan earlier this summer, I had also been looking for a good time to try some sculpting with marzipan. I thought that some simple pumpkin would be a relatively easy first project:

Surprisingly enough, they actually turned out how I intended. I think that for next time, by omitting the strong flavored almond extract and adding in some pumpkin pie spices, these would be really phenomenal if they looked like pumpkins and tasted like pie.

--Isaac.