We all recall my ONE pumpkin. I planted, oh... say around 75 plants and they produced ONE pumpkin. My fault for not watering during a very dry summer. I lost so much interest, that I can't even remember the three varieties of pumpkin that I planted. I want to be a major producer of pumpkins (and by that I mean maybe 100, not an outlandish amount.) So I want to be able to tell buyers how to cook their pumpkin, if they are those kind of people. (I come from people that decorated with pumpkins and compassionately put them out for the trash the following week.)
This method of cooking pumpkin saves you from arm strain trying to cut up a raw pumpkin, and it gives a glorious bright orange steamed puree:
First I gently washed Mr. Pumpkin and stabbed him several times with a large carving knife (you can understand why my peeps were squeamish about this.) I took out the top rack of the oven and turned it on to 400 degreees. I lined a large cookie tray with foil and set the whole entire pumpkin on it (jabbed, but not cut up.) It was a large pumpkin with thick walls, so I think that I left it in 90 minutes. Until you could literally stick a fork in it and have it feel tender. A smaller pumpkin would not take so long. Take it out and let it cool. Cut the cooled pumpkin in two. Spoon out guts and seeds (a better person than I would have roasted the seeds.) Cut away the skin. Put chunks of cooked pumpkin in a food processor until smooth. Try to get as much orange goo scattered around the kitchen as you possibly can. As you can see, I put two cups in each zip lock baggy (I got 12 CUPS out of my ONE pumpkin!) You can keep it for a week in the fridge, or put it in the freezer.
For my first pumpkin recipe (more to come) I made two mini traditional pumpkin breads.
The recipe makes one regular sized loaf or two minis.
1 cup pumpkin puree
1 egg
1/4 cup vegetable or sunflower oil
1/4 cup sour cream
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 T pumpkin pie spice (I made my own, recipe below)
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
(if you want a cream cheese swirl mix 8 oz cream cheese (softened), one egg, 1/8 cup sugar, 3 T flour and swirl it in. Don't make my mistake -- do use regular full fat cream cheese.)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line pan (s) with foil. Combine all moist ingredients in one bowl, and dry in a different bowl. Fold in the dry until just combined. Spoon into pan (s) and bake 45-50 for the regular sized loaf pan, less for smaller.
Pumpkin Pie Spice:
- 3 tablespoons ground cinnamon
- 2 teaspoons ground ginger
- 2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon ground allspice
- 1 teaspoon ground cloves
That looks good.
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