How to Cook Fresh Pumpkin by Shelley Hopkins

This year for Halloween I waited until the last minute to buy our pumpkin, and all that was left was the small sugar pumpkins.  It was too small to carve, so we created a face from paper, and took it with us to our trunk or treat.  It sat in the back of our car looking out over all the children and their costumes.  Back at home it looked over the kitchen for several days, smiling at me as I cooked.   Today, I turned it into muffins, and very good muffins they were too.

Pumpkins are harder to cut than I expected.  I had to use both a huge sharp knife, and leverage as I pulled the cut sides apart.  I cleaned out the seeds and pulp, cut the pumpkin into two pieces and placed them in an oven safe dish.  I cooked the pumpkin parts for an hour and a half at 325.  I cleaned the seeds, salted them and placed them on an oiled cookie sheet.  I cooked them about 25 minutes at the same time and same temperature.  When the pumpkin was fork tender, I let the pieces cool, then scraped the meat into a bowl.  With a hand blender I pureed the meat and used 1 cup of it in my muffins.  This was so easy, I don’t know why I had never tried it before, and fresh pumpkin is so much better than canned.

Pumpkin Muffin recipe from allrecipes.com

2 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp ground cinnamon

½ tsp ground nutmeg

½ tsp ground ginger

2 eggs

1/3 cup buttermilk ( I just add a drop or two of vinegar into milk before using)

1 TBS molasses (  I didn’t add this, I was out of it)

½ tsp vanilla extract

1 cup white sugar

 1 cup canned pumpkin (or fresh)

½ cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350.  Grease muffin cups.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and spices.

Beat together everything else except pecans in a large bowl.  Mix the dry ingredients and stir just until moistened.  Then fold in the pecans.  Spoon into muffin pans and cook 20 – 25 minutes.

When done I added an orange glaze.  I mixed powdered sugar, a drop or two of vanilla and a couple of spoonfuls of orange juice.  I stirred until a glaze formed, and this glaze tasted great with the pumpkin.