Almost every fall the local Farmer’s Market and CSA have fresh pie pumpkins available. Because my son and husband really like pumpkin pie I typically get one to roast and make pumpkin puree. I really prefer freshly roasted pumpkin puree to store bought. The flavor is a bit richer and when one uses pie pumpkin the texture is exceptional without the work of food processing and sieving to ensure no stringy bit are present.
If you haven’t roasted pumpkin before, it is a fairly simple process.
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper
- Cut the pumpkin in half and scoop out all the seeds
- Sprinkle cut sides of pumpkin with a tiny bit of kosher salt
- Place cut side down on the baking sheet
- Bake for 20 minutes
- Remove from oven and flip pumpkin sides over so cut side is now up
- Bake for 20 more minutes
- Remove from oven and cool
- Using a large spoon scoop the cooked pumpkin from the skin and place in a container to freeze or store in the fridge.
This year I ended up getting two pie pumpkins to roast and thus had a lot of extra pumpkin puree to use. Since I like to have easy “grab and go” things to eat for breakfast, I decided that I should make some pumpkin muffins. I found a really easy recipe to start from and made some minimal modifications the key one being adding toasted chopped Texas pecans.
I thought the fact the recipe made a dozen muffins would give me PLENTY for the week. However, my six year old, after having a taste, decided these were a favorite and requested them for breakfast every morning. So the batch was gone before the week was up.
He also requested that I make them for his classroom Thanksgiving “feast”.So I ended up making a second batch with canned pumpkin and without nuts (a classmate has a nut allergy). This batch was tasty but didn’t have QUITE the same texture. I’m hoping to make another batch this weekend for the kiddo and I to share next week.