Baking With Pumpkin

I like to bake and take great pride in making something different that you don’t see every day, Pumpkin Bread is great for desert while entertaining family and friends or just every day treats. Pumpkin is a versatile squash, everything from soup to side dishes and desserts are made with pumpkin. I like to bake with pumpkin from scratch, and the first step to baking with pumpkin from scratch is making Pumpkin Puree so that is where I am going to start.

Step 1: Pumpkin Puree

First select a nice pumpkin, one about a foot across makes about six cups of puree. Wash the pumpkin and check it for bad spots.

Step 2: Cleaning the Pumpkin

Cut the pumpkin in half with a strong knife and scrape out the guts, separate the seeds from the stringy bits and wash the seeds. Put the seeds aside to make roasted pumpkin seeds latter.

Step 3: Cooking the Pumpkin

Don’t bother to peel the pumpkin yet, dice it into one inch cubes, discard any bad pieces and place the good parts into a pot and add water until the cubes float.

Put the pot on the stove on high until it begins to simmer then turn the heat down. The pumpkin is cooked when the cubes no longer float.

Once cooked take the pot off the heat and let stand until cool.

Step 4: Pureeing the Pumpkin

When the pumpkin is cool you can peel it with a butter knife, place the peeled cubes in a bowl and mash with a potato masher or a hand blender. Now you are ready to bake or freeze for later.

Step 5: Pumpkin Bread

The prep time to make the pumpkin bread is 15 minutes so I put the oven on at 350⁰ F or 175⁰ C to preheat the oven and grease the bread pans with butter.

Step 6: Ingredients

Start by gathering the ingredients together.

Ingredients

1. 1 ½ cups pumpkin puree

2. 4 eggs

3. 1 cup vegetable oil

4. 2/3 cup water

5. 3 cups white sugar

6. 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

7. 2 teaspoons baking soda

8. 1 1/2 teaspoons salt

9. 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

10. 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

11. 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

12. 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

Step 7: Mixing

In a large bowl; mix together pumpkin puree, eggs, oil, water, and sugar, then whisk 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 the batter is well blended.

Step 8: Baking

Pour the batter into the prepared pans to about half full and check the oven to be sure it is up to heat.

Place the pans on the middle rack of the oven and bake for about 50 minutes in the preheated oven. Loaves are done when you can insert a toothpick in the center of the loaf and it comes out clean.

Once baked let the loves cool on a rack, when the loves are cool turn the pan over and tap on the bottom to make the loaf come out of the pan. Now you can glaze the loves or serve as is.

Step 9: Glaze

Gather the Ingredients.

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar

3 tablespoons milk

1/2 teaspoon clear vanilla extract

Artificial Coloring

Makes about 1/2 cup of Glaze.

Step 10: Instructions

In a measuring cup stir milk into sugar adding vanilla and artificial coloring.

Glaze may be thickened with confectioners' sugar or thinned with milk or other flavored liquids.

Place loves on wax paper.

Drizzle glaze on sweet bread or cupcakes.

Wait for the glaze to set and you are ready to serve.

Step 11: Pumpkin Seeds

Ingredients

Gather ingredients

Pumpkin seeds

Salt

Water

Olive Oil

Optional Ingredients

Butter only if spicing or flavoring seeds.

Spices & Flavoring

Step 12: Cooking and Salting the Pumpkin Seeds

Clean the pumpkin seeds under cold water in a colander or sieve to remove the stringy parts of the pumpkin.

Measure the pumpkin seeds in a cup measure and place in a pot. Add two cups of water and one table spoon of salt for every half cup of pumpkin seeds.

Place the pot on the stove and bring to a boil and let simmer for ten minutes.

Remove from heat and drain.

Now if you just want your pumpkin seeds salty go straight to baking.

But if you want your pumpkin seeds spicy this is the time to spice the seeds.

Step 13: Spicing Pumpkin Seeds

You can add Chilly or some other spice you like or a flavoring to your pumpkin seeds. Cheese, Ketchup, and Hickory flavored pumpkin seeds are my son’s favorites. It makes the seeds a little darker but they taste great.

For every half cup of pumpkin seeds; add to a plastic bag 1 teaspoon cheese powder and ½ teaspoon butter, shake until fully mixed. Spread out on a cookie sheet and baked.

For every half cup of pumpkin seeds; add to a plastic bag 1 teaspoon Ketchup and ½ teaspoon butter, shake until fully mixed. Spread out on a cookie sheet and baked.

For every half cup of pumpkin seeds; add to a plastic bag 1 teaspoon liquid Hickory smoke and ½ teaspoon butter, shake until fully mixed. Spread out on a cookie sheet and baked.

Step 14: Baking the Pumpkin Seeds

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Coat the bottom of a roasting pan or thick baking sheet with olive oil, about a teaspoon or so. Spread the seeds out over the roasting pan in a single layer, and toss them a bit to coat them with the oil on the pan. Bake on the top rack until the seeds begin to brown, 5-20 minutes, depending on the size of the seeds.

Spiced Pumpkin Seeds are darker than plain pumpkin seeds.

Step 15: Finished

There you have it five products from one pumpkin.

Plain Pumpkin Bread

Glazed Pumpkin Bread

Plain Salted Pumpkin Seeds

Spiced Pumpkin Seeds

Pumpkin Puree

And I didn’t even get into cookies or cupcakes