Pumpkin Thread

6 cups canned pure pumpkin (or roasted squash* such as acorn, delicata, or butternut)
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup apple cider (I didn't have any regular on hand so subbed with a sparkling apple/pomegranate cider which worked quite well)
1 1/2 tablespoons pumpkin pie spice (I really like my pumpkin spicy so I upped this to 2 tbls)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS

Place all ingredients in the slow cooker, and stir together. Cook on low for 7 hours. Remove lid, stir, and cook uncovered for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Transfer pumpkin butter to a blender or food processor, and process until smooth. Store pumpkin butter in the fridge.

*If roasting remove seeds, rub with oil, and roast flesh side down for about an hour at 400°F.

I'm not too impressed with today's Supper Club article taste-testing seasonable pumpkin spice products. The author hates real pumpkin, where can he go but dumping on everything? At least a few commenters offer some real pumpkin recipe ideas. I still want to cook thinks out of this thread, but I haven't even cut up those garden pumpkins yet; the whole recovery deal just has me so tired by the time I get home from work.

Anyway, I bought a box of Pumpkin Spice Frosted Mini Wheats.

This is the least appetizing thing on the thread so far. They're not awful, but I don't have anything to recommend about them. They're not over-sweet, and they don't leave the cereal milk tasting nasty. Bu they don't taste like pumpkin, and they don't taste like pumpkin pie (and I thought the latter was the whole point of pumpkin spice). One upon a time I had the blueberry version of this (another flavor that's hard to mess up for me), and they were pretty decent.

ganews how do you think they'd be in a trail mix? You could also obliterate them to make a crust for pie.

Yeah, I think a pie-bar would be a better fit for more crispness


 

Today I had a Thomas pumpkin-spice bagel from the 5k.

Now this is pumpkin spice done right. It tasted like a bagel with a nice, light flavor of pumpkin.

Pumpkins were iffy from my farmshare this year, but I managed to score one cheesewheel-style one with a green shell (I have no idea what type it is) that I roasted this weekend to turn into puree.  My concerns that we were doomed to a year of flavorless pumpkin baked goods were proved baseless, as this pumpkin turned out to be pretty delish.  I wanted to do a layer cake this weekend but ran out of time, so instead we ended up with pumpkin cheesecake swirl brownies.  Delish!  "Sugar pie" pumpkins often, as pairesta mentions, seem insipid to me, but I have yet to go wrong with a cheesewheel-shaped one.  And man, that almost orange-laced flavor from them is so great in a pumpkin cheesecake setting!

Trader Joe's ginger pumpkin ice cream mouthfuls are a goddamn delight.

I am now the proud owner of 56 oz. of pumpkin butter. I wiped out the blender with a piece of bread. It's damn good, not too strong, and I look forward to putting it on everything. There's so much I might give some away in small jars.

I have two more intact pumpkins to do something with.

It's that time of year again! 3RD ANNUAL PUMPKIN THREAD

So I get back from Italy and go the the grocery store and apparently it's Halloween now. Pumpkin stuff is everywhere. That means it's almost time to buy pumpkin spaghetti sauce, king of store-brand seasonal pumpkin products! I resisted buying a bag of pumpkin Cheerios that day, but I did have my first Oktoberfest beer last night.


White chocolate ain't chocolate, so if I come across these things I'll just pick out the orange ones to eat.

That's right! Thanks to Gumbercules' fantastic recommendation of Al Bottegon in Venice, I had a bit of cicchetti with pumpkin and cheese on it that was excellent.

Yesterday my neighbor gave me another pumpkin from her backyard garden! Last year I made Pastafarian's excellent pumpkin butter recipe above. This year I need to devote at least some of this pumpkin to another try of kaddo bourani. What to do with the rest?

Roast Pumpkin, Radicchio And Feta Salad?

Based on personal experience; not making marshmallows, but having all those ingredients, I'd say do it!
Gelatin can be used for a few things, and it's pretty cheap. You can make panna cotta, or you can use it to thicken "veggie" stock (veggie in quotes because, well, it's not veggie anymore). Corn syrup will probably sit on your shelf for a long time. I have a bottle that's probably 3 years old. My candy thermometer has never been used. I have a thermopop, and those are rated for up to 500 degrees (but I think it loses fine accuracy past 300), so my candy thermometer has just sat there unneeded. So, if you have a regular thermometer, see if that will work for the temp the sugar needs to be. I imagine they'd want it in the "softball" stage, which is something like 240F.

All the churches around here set up big "pumpkin farms" this time of year, where you go, pick out pumpkins to make into jack-o-lanterns, take pictures on hay bales with scarecrows, etc. It used to be a fun, goofy little ritual, but now there's two kids to corral, we do it last minute so the pumpkins are picked over and rotten. Plus, these being churches in Texas, who knows what right-wing political causes we're inadvertently funding by patronizing them. This past weekend I was out out local chichi store and noted that even enormous pumpkins were only $8 each, a fraction of the $20-$30 we spend at these pumpkin farms, so I think that's the end of that particular fall ritual.