The Great Pumpkin

When we went to our favorite pumpkin patch this year to pick out our Hallowe'en pumpkins, we got a pumpkin for each member of the family.  My husband and I each picked out nice-sized carving pumpkins with sturdy stems, and our daughter picked out her own smaller stemless pumpkin, and I grabbed a small "pie" pumpkin for our son, because he's not quite two yet and had no idea what was going on, and he's not going to be carving his own jack-o-lantern for several years yet.

At some point, it occurred to me that the thing to do, once Hallowe'en was over and we no longer required the pumpkins for decorative purposes, would be to make some pumpkin-based culinary treats.  My daughter's been crazy about "helping" me cook lately, and I thought if I could find a diet-friendly recipe or two, I might give it a go.  All in all, the experiment was a wild success, so I'm sharing it here, if for no other reason than it'll be handy when I want to repeat it later.


Step One:  Preparing the Pumpkin.
Most recipes call for your pumpkin to be precooked and pureed.  So Hallowe'en night, after we'd turned off our porch light, I brought in the pumpkin.  I cut off the top (just like for a carving pumpkin, though with more difficulty, since pie pumpkins have thicker skin and meat), then cut it in half and scooped out the seeds and the goopy strands they hang in.

(As a side note, pie pumpkins have fatter seeds than carving pumpkins, and I was tempted to collect these and roast them...  but pumpkin seeds have an insane amount of calories and/or fat, even if you toast them without using butter.  And while I like pumpkin seeds, I don't like them enough to burn that many points on 'em!)

I got a baking sheet out, lightly sprayed it with some cooking spray, then put the two pumpkin halves flat-side down on the sheet, then covered them with foil.  I put the sheet in a 375-degree (F) oven for about 90 minutes.  (A little less than that, actually, when I started to smell something burning.  The burning turned out to be some juice that had leaked out from under the foil and run to the far edge of the pan.  The pumpkin itself was not burnt at all, though the skin had turned dark brown.)  By then, it was bedtime, so I left the baking sheet on the stove to cool overnight.

In the morning, I went to turn one over and got a fun surprise:  The inedible outer skin of the pumpkin lifted straight off the meat.  So much for having to "scoop it out"!  The instructions I was following recommended that I go through all sorts of weird steps to puree and strain the pumpkin, but I wasn't planning on making haute cuisine with it - a few lumps would be fine.  So I just dumped the meat into a large plastic mixing bowl and took my stick blender to it.  (I love my stick blender.  Though I should mention that it probably wasn't necessary in this case.  The pumpkin was so soft that it probably would've been perfectly pureed given about two minutes with a manual potato masher.)

Anyway, when it was all done, I spooned the puree into one-cup tupperware containers.  I got three full cups out of the pumpkin (which was probably about 5 pounds?).  Plus a couple of spoonfuls for my son, who was wandering around underfoot.  He was pretty enthusiastic about the stuff, and I tried a bite, myself:  All by itself, without any seasoning at all, the pumpkin puree tasted almost just like sweet potato.  And it was weird to know that I hadn't seasoned it at all, because I would otherwise have sworn it had some cinnamon and cloves in it already.  Very tasty stuff!

Recipe #1:  Pumpkin Muffins
I got this recipe from the Weight Watchers site, and if you're a WW member, you can probably go straight to it at this link.  But in case you're not a member, or they get rid of the recipe at some point in the future, here it is:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp table salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
2/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 cup pumpkin puree (can use canned, but fresh is better!)
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup egg substitute (e.g., Egg Beaters)
2/3 cup fat-free skim milk

1. Preheat oven to 400ºF. Coat a 12-hole muffin tin with cooking spray. (I recommend not using cupcake papers, because this is an oil-less recipe and they will stick to the muffins. If you really want to use them, spray the insides of the liners as well.)
2. Combine flour, baking powder, salt , baking soda, and spices in a large bowl.
3. Combine applesauce, pumpkin, sugar, egg substitute and milk in a medium bowl; mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon.
4. Add applesauce mixture to flour mixture and mix until completely incorporated.
5. Pour batter into muffin tins so each hole is about 2/3 full. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a tester inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean.

• Note #1:  If you compare to the original WW recipe, you might note that I reduced the amount of nutmeg and added some ginger.  I did that because I love ginger and I don't much care for nutmeg.  Adjust spices at your own whim; just try to keep the total amount more or less the same.
• Note #2:  I made both mini-muffins and regular-sized ones.  I used 1 heaping Tbsp of batter for each mini-muffin (baking for only 12-13 minutes), and 3 heaping Tbsp of batter for each  normal muffin, and that netted me 24 minis and 10 regular muffins -- which works out to 18 servings, if you assume a serving is 3 minis or 1 normal.  The WW recipe says it makes 12 servings of 3 points each, but if you get 18 servings like I did, then they're 2 points each.  Either way, they were really tasty!

But when that was done, I was still left with 2 cups of pumpkin puree, and I didn't really want to make that many muffins.  Which led me to...

Recipe #2:  Pumpkin Soup
I adapted this from another recipe online, so I'll just post what I've got:

2 cups cooked pumpkin, pureed
8 oz sweet (e.g., vidalia) onion, diced
1 tsp butter
4 cups chicken broth
1/4 tsp salt (may need a touch more if using low-sodium broth, but this is a good starting place)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp black pepper
2 Tbsp packed brown sugar
12 oz fat-free evaporated milk (1 can)

1. Saute onion in butter (and some cooking spray, if needed) until it just begins to brown.
2. Add 1-2c of broth, remove from heat, and puree until smooth.  (I have mentioned that I love my stick blender, right?  You can also do this in a regular blender or food processor, but then you have a larger doodad to clean.)
   
3. Put it back over heat, and add remaining broth, pumpkin, spices, and sugar.  Bring to a boil and simmer 10 min.
4. Remove from heat and add milk.

• Note #1:  The entire recipe is about 13 points; I got 4 meal-sized servings of about 2 cups each out of this, so that's 3 points per serving.  I want to make this again for Thanksgiving dinner (if not before that), but that will probably be smaller 1-cup servings for half the points.
  
• Note #2:  The recipe I adapted it from recommended serving it with cinnamon toast, which sounds really quite lovely.
• Note #3:  The soup was wonderful, but a) a touch thin, and b) almost too sweet.  For future batches, I might reduce the amount of brown sugar (just 1 Tbsp for that dark flavor, maybe) and add a tablespoon or two of either cornstarch or flour to thicken it up a bit.

I had a muffin last night for a snack, and the soup today for lunch.  Both were absolutely wonderful, well-worth the effort involved in cleaning/roasting/pureeing the pumpkin.  And as a bonus, my daughter really enjoyed helping me cook!  I've definitely found myself some new fall favorites.