After we'd finished catapulting pom-poms in place of pumpkins to our hearts' content yesterday, we cut into the two tiny sugar pumpkins, that have been decorating our table.
While the children sorted through the pumpkin goo and guts for seeds to roast (click here for our favorite roasting recipe)...
...I read Jacqueline Farmer's Pumpkins, a non-fiction work for children, providing information about the pumpkin life-cycle, varieties, geography, history - including the creepy history of the Jack-O'-Lantern, links, and recipes for roasted pumpkin seeds, a pilgrim type "pie", and a more modern pumpkin-maple pie.In fact, we cut one of our pumpkins in half...
...just so we could clean it out...
...and roast it in a pan with 1/4 cup of water, at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for an hour...
...until it was soft enough to scoop out the pumpkin for pureeing in the blender...
...to turn it into one of Farmer's pumpkin-maple pies. I couldn't find the exact recipe online to share, though this one is close, just add an egg and a tablespoon of flour to it, and substitute maple extract for the cinnamon, and a cup of cream for the half cup of sour cream, and you'll have it.
It turns out, we're pumpkin pie purists though, so this wasn't our favorite pie. But, the maple smelled wonderful mixed with the pumpkin while baking.
We cut our second pumpkin, Jack-O'-Lantern style, so we could try out the pilgrim type recipe in the book, as well.
It called for cleaning out the pumpkin, and filling it with peeled and chopped apples...
...molasses (we added around 2 tablespoons, and the girls discovered the origin of the phrase "as slow as molasses)...
...spices (we used a teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice)...
...and milk.
Early settlers would have baked their pumpkins in the hot coals of their fires, but we opted to bake ours for an hour in a 35o degree oven.
Without an egg, or any kind of thickening agent, it turned out to be more of a sweet, spicy pumpkin soup (not too bad, since "make pumpkin soup" was one of our fall to-dos). With the addition of a tablespoon of brown sugar, we decided it wasn't bad - just not exactly good either.
But, if you weren't accustomed to today's sweet desserts, and maybe with the addition of nuts, and raisins, it could probably make for a pleasant enough treat on a chilly fall day. At the very least, it was a fun experiment for our autumn afternoon.
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It's great to be a homeschooler.
This would be fun for Thanksgiving as well. Thanks for sharing it with us.
ReplyDeleteThis gives me hope for pumpkins. I thought once before that I would try actually using the pumkins we carved, but didn't have the kitchen tool that was listed in the recipie I chose to fallow. Might try my blender, I actually have one of those. *smile* Thanks for sharing the ideas you found and tried here. sincerely, Mommy of two little blessings & so much more!
ReplyDeleteI bet if you used honey or maple syrup inplace of molasses it would have had a better flavor/sweetness. Molasses on it's own isn't very sweet for most people. ;)
ReplyDeleteInteresting recipes! I think we will roast some seeds this Halloween too, but nobody in the family cares for anything with pumpkin otherwise.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great post!!! I am also a pumpkin pie purist :-) Thanks for linking up!!!
ReplyDeleteI'm assuming that's supposed to be a tablespoon of flour, not tablespoon of four :)
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'll break down and try pumpkin soup at some point, but I just haven't because it doesn't sound good to me for some reason.
Ticia - Good eye - thanks! I wasn't sure either, but we tried a pumpkin soup recipe last year that was really good, especially when served with fresh bread.
ReplyDeleteI have yet to pick up any pumpkins. You better believe we will be making pumpkin pies.
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