Sunday, November 1, 2009

Making Pumpkin

Here in Ukraine, as in many places outside the States, you can't buy canned pumpkin. Well, since food and holidays go hand in hand for me, I set about finding out how to make my own pumpkin. Last year, our American friends, the Woffords, gave us some, since we had just moved here not long before. This year, I made my own! And guess what? It is super easy.
There are several recipes you can follow. I got mine off this website:How to Cook your Pumpkin.

1) Clean the outside of the pumpkin.
2) Cut pumpkin into pieces (I did 4).
3) Carve and scrape out the seeds and strings.
4) Put in covered dish and bake in the oven for about an hour.

After one hour, the peel came right off and it was pretty mushed/pureed already. I plopped it into a plastic container and stored it in my fridge for making. It yielded about 4 cups, enough for 2 recipes of pumpkin chocolate chip cake! Delicious!

If you are wondering about pumpkin chocolate chip muffins/cake, here is the recipe!
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cup-Cakes
1 yellow cake mix
3 eggs
1/2 c. water
1/3 c. oil
1 can pumpkin (15 oz)
1 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. nutmeg
1 c. chocolate chips.
Mix dry ingredients and then add wet ingredients. Cook 350 degrees in greased (or paper cups) muffin pans.






2 comments:

Unknown said...

I love the pretty pumpkin cooking pictures! So neat. Sometimes it is wonderful to learn how to make something we've always taken for granted - like canned pumpkin!

David and Olivia said...

Nicely done, chef! :) This is the type of pumpkin I used to make the pumpkin pie with... not the stringy type like the other one I did. (Just fyi)