Pumpkins

My very favourite part of autumn is......pumpkins!  I love their shape, their colour, their flavour.  Up until my late 20's I only ever used canned pumpkin, the main reason being you can get it year round in American grocery stores.  Then I learned that you can buy fresh pumpkins and cook them down yourself, a revelation!

That is what the girls and I did today.

We started with three lovely little sugar pumpkins.  I've used regular jack o' lantern pumpkins before, and they work just fine.  Perhaps they are a bit more stringy, because sugar pumpkins have such soft fine flesh.  You can also use a butternut squash if you can't get your hands on a pumpkin.  Here in the UK they are definitely harder to find than in the US.

 

Normally I cut the pumpkins in half, scrape out the seeds (save these!) and then put them cut side down in a pan with about an inch of water. Cover with foil and cook for an hour or until soft.  
 
I was reading online today about boiling them instead, so we decided to do them both ways.


In the end, I found boiling them gently faster, which is better when you are doing several pumpkins.  Next time I'll use an even bigger stock pot and do two pumpkins at once.  

After they are cooked until soft, we pulled them out, let them cool until we could handle them, and then using a spoon gentley scraped out the flesh into the Cuisinart.  Whiz whiz and you have pumpkin puree.  I put them in ziplocks in 1 or 2 cup measurements, as that is what most recipes called for.  The three pumpkins we used gave us 10 cups total.

Using one cup we made a gorgeous pumpkin bread.  Yum!

Maine Pumpkin Bread (from Allrecipes.com)

• 2 cups pumpkin purée
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 2/3 cup water
• 3 cups white sugar
• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour three 7x3 inch loaf pans.
2. In a large bowl, mix together pumpkin purée, eggs, oil, water and sugar until well blended. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. Stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended. Pour into the prepared pans.
3. Bake for about 50 minutes in the preheated oven. Loaves are done when toothpick inserted in centre comes out clean.