Savoury Pumpkin, Cream Cheese and Bacon Baked Goods - which Pissed Sous Chef Off

Guess what? I am not done with pumpkin yet. Especially since I still have a quarter of mini pumpkin in the fridge which was threatening to go rotten on me.

So I went ahead and pissed sous chef by baking these savoury goodies.

Wait...how did that happen?
It was all because I prioritized baking these goodies in lieu of cooking a pot of rice for dinner.
Oppps, my bad.

Hong Kongers love their bowls of hot and steamy rice...even if they had to eat it with just a few drops of soy sauce, it beats any baked goods I could ever muster. No matter how good and tasty the baked goods were, in sous chef's mind, they will never replace the goodness of that bowl of rice. The absence of rice, made the day so wrong on so many levels for sous chef.

So, imagine hungry sous chef's facial expression of disappointment, frustration and despair upon coming home to face an empty rice cooker. Trust me, it was heart breaking.

I kinda felt bad for the...
Savoury Pumpkin, Cream Cheese and Bacon Baked Goods

...cos they really taste fun-bloody-tastic.
I mean...come on! Look at that pile of rich tasting cream cheese, greasy and crispy bacon, plus fragrant and creamy pumpkin...how could they ever go wrong?

Even the batter looked that good!

Recipe
(yields 8 baked goods)
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup oatmeal
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 4 tbsp sugar
- 1 cup mashed pumpkin (chop pumpkin into small cubes, add 2 tbsp of milk, microwave on high for about 8 minutes and mash with a fork)
- a few strips of bacon (chopped and pan fried until slightly browned, keep the oil)
- 1 egg
- 3/4 cup of milk
- 1/2 stick of cream cheese (cut into cubes)
- 1/2 cup of olive oil
- a few sprinkles of mixed italian herbs (rosemary, oregano and thyme)

Preheat oven to 180C. Mix dry ingredients in a bowl, make a well in the middle, add wet ingredients, add pureed pumpkin, add bacon including the oil, set some aside for topping. To ensure even distribution of cream cheese goodness, it is better to add the cream cheese cubes into each cup of batter. Pour a couple tablespoons of batter into muffin tray lined with paper cups or greased ramekins, add cream cheese cubes, top off with more batter, add bacon topping and cream cheese (you could never have enough cream cheese), bake for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

As expected, sous chef didn't stay pissed for too long...or he might have to live on only bowls of white rice and soy sauce for a longgg longgg time. ^_*