Pumpkin Wine, Who Knew?

As most of you know, I am always up for trying new combinations of things, when it comes to cooking and baking.

Well have I got one for you for this holiday season. With Halloween a couple days away here is a review and recipe for you.

The wine comes from our friends at Diamond head Wine(they are located between Pryor and Adair,OK.You can find their site at www.diamondheadwine.com.They specialize in fruit and dessert wines.) The wine is called Jack-O-Lantern, and as you may have guessed by the name it is a pumpkin wine. Here is what it looks like:

According to wine creator, it took him four years to come up with creation. The orange color reminds you of an Oklahoma sunset. Upon opening the wine, you are greeted with the pungent aroma of pumpkin and some spice.

The wine does have the flavor of pumpkin pie, but with a bit of a  heat kick in the back end. It is a good kick though. I could see sitting down with a glass at the holidays and watching some holiday specials.

The recipe I came up with for this, is the following(Happy Halloween):

Pumpkin Wine Cake:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

One Best Choice Spice Cake Mix

 One and 1/3 cups of the Jack-O-Lantern wine pictured above in the beginning of this post, to replace the water you would normally put into this cake.
1/3 cup of vegetable oil
3 whole eggs, cracked

Combine all of your ingredients in a mixing bowl, until well combined:

Once well combined pour in to a silicone pumpkin shaped pan, sprayed with non-stick cooking spray, on a pizza pan

Bake for 30-45 minutes. Once the cake is done, and your toothpick test comes out with a clean toothpick, turn it out to cool. Turn off the oven.

Here is an optional frosting for the cake:

6T of Prepared Cream Cheese frosting
4 T of Jack-O-Lantern wine

Combine ingredients in a small bowl and frost your cake, and serve with a glass of pumpkin wine or your favorite Halloween beverage.

I hope you will stop by the  Diamondhead Wine website, or if your out Northeast Oklahoma way stop by their facility.(for more info check the website).

I also hope your will enjoy this cake with who ever you choose.  This wine also does well in a gingerbread mix also. Enjoy!

The Third Review for Sneaky Pete's Oat Beverage.....

In this review we will be looking at Sneaky Pete's All Natural Oat Beverage Peach Flavor. As with the other flavors , when you first open it, you get a major hit of peach scent, and the color is the same as the other, sort of the murky oatmeal color, but that is a given, since the beverage is brewed with oatmeal. The taste was good, it is not what you expect.  

With this flavor of oat beverage, I wanted to see how it married with pork. So for this round I came up with a pork loin from the grocery store.

The pork loin came from the local Walmart meat department in Muskogee, Oklahoma. So when I got the pork loin home I did the following recipe:

Peachy Pork Loin:

Get a container for marinating your loin. Put a little salt and pepper in the container. Cut open the pork loin and roll around salt and pepper, then put in the full bottle of the Oat Beverage Peach Flavor, and let set covered in the frig over night, but if making same day let marinate a few hours.

While your pork loin is marinating, preheat your oven to 500 degrees. Get out your loin, and put it on a cookie sheet and once the oven is done heating put it in and bake for 30 minutes.

Once the loin is done take it out, turn off the oven, and let set 10 minutes to let the juices re-distribute. Get out your favorite sauce to compliment the loin. All though it may not be a pungent peach flavor, you will notice a sweetness.

You could also serve with a fruit salad with a vanilla Greek yogurt dressing. For that, you get your favorite vanilla Greek yogurt and chop up your favorite fruits and mix in. Make sure you include a peach into the salad to compliment the pork.

Overall this beverage is good alone or with pork. Everyone will enjoy it. If this is out in your area, get some and try it out, celebrate oatmeal year around, not just one day a year. Happy National Oatmeal Day!

The Second of Three Reviews.....

Well I said at the end of the last review, that I was going to see if I could cook with the grape flavored oat drink pictured below:

I found out you can cook with Sneaky Pete's All Natural Oat Beverage Grape Flavor. I chose to make drop biscuits with it. 

Here is the recipe for them:

1 and 1/3 cups of  Oat beverage shown above.
4 cups of Jiffy Baking Mix

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.  

Combine both in a mixing bowl, until well combined. Then take a large cookie scoop(aka. ice cream scoop) and scoop out onto a sprayed cookie sheet, or whatever pan you have around. 

Once all scooped to pans, and oven is finished preheating , put in oven and bake for 12 minutes.

Upon finishing, take out and do the toothpick test. If toothpick comes out clean, remove from pans, and let cool.

As to the flavor of the Grape flavor oat beverage, it is a bit on the medicine side, which was surprising. It has a great grape scent though, not like grape soda, but the actual fruit.

So, in the end it cooks really well, the biscuits had an added sweetness, and grape aroma that was pleasing without adding too much more sweetness to the actual biscuit. Serve the biscuits with your favorite preserve, jam or jelly.

Here are some other pictures of what it took to make the biscuits:

The third review will be pork loin and peach flavor oat drink, how well do they pair?

The First of Three Reviews....

As the title states this is the first of three reviews. The product I will be reviewing today is pictured above. It is called Sneaky Pete's All Natural Oat Beverage Apple.

Thank You to Victoria Domenico at The Baddish Group in NYC for sending me the 3 samples, to help celebrate National Oatmeal Day.

The packaging is very visually appealing to the eye, and makes you wonder what it will taste like.

When you open it the first scent you get is a strong apple scent.

Granted it is apple flavor. But when you take the first drink, it reminds you more of apple cinnamon oatmeal.

Once you get past the color, it really is a decent drink for 40 calories. On the bottle it says one serving is equal to bottle, so you can enjoy it without feeling guilty.

This would be a great drink to take on a trip for a quick kick start to the day, or a nice way to close your evening when you do not want a whole lot of caffeine.

So, if you have it in your area yet, you might try a bottle and see what you think.

Everyone's experience will be different. Just remember to enjoy it, and who knows it may become a favorite for your family or friends.

Next Review: Grape Flavor.....can you cook with it? We will see.....