This Halloween, we decided to decorate our pumpkins with crayons instead of carving jack-o-lanterns so that we could actually eat the pumpkins. Now that the holiday is over, I have pumpkin puree coming out of my ears. Making pumpkin puree is surprisingly easy! Click HERE for step-by-step guide with pictures.
Once you have the puree, there are a million things you can do with it. Here are a few of my favorites:
- Pumpkin Pie. Duh.
- Pumpkin Ooey Gooey Bars. My mother made a healthy version of this classic Paula Dean recipe this weekend using fresh pumpkin and an organic cake mix. Very good!
- Pumpkin Peanut Soup. I made this for dinner tonight. It was very simple and very tasty. It reminded me of satay sauce.
- Curried Pumpkin Soup. This recipe is a bit more complicated, but sounds (and looks) amazing! I found this recipe on Canary Girl, a great blog by an American mother of four living in the Canary Islands. She loves to cook and take pictures of her food. Her photographs are gorgeous!
You can also freeze the puree in ice cube trays. I've done this with lots of different fruits and vegetables. Because the cubes are small, they defrost quickly. These are some of the ways I've used frozen puree cubes. It's a great way to sneak extra nutrients into to a recipe without dramatically changing the taste.
- smoothies
- pancakes
- french toast
- vegetable soup
- spaghetti sauce
- pizza sauce
