When my mom & dad came to visit me and escape the unending power outage of Ike we went to pick apples and we also stopped by a pumpkin patch. We picked out little pumpkins to decorate with and a medium pumpkin to carve for Halloween but perhaps the most interesting pumpkin that we picked was a Cinderella pumpkin. The lady who was running the pumpkin patch that day extolled the greatness of this Cinderella pumpkin and its myriad uses: I could roast it and make soup, pie, or bread. I like pumpkin soup, I'm ok with pumpkin pie, but I love pumpkin bread! Once she said that, I was sold! So, my dad & I picked out the best Cinderella pumpkin we could find (and one that wasn't too big, it is for a singleton, after all!) and brought it home along with the apples and the other pumpkins. I roasted the pumpkin and I ended up with about 12-14 cups of pureed pumpkin, not bad!
- The inside of the pumpkin: it wasn't nearly as bad to clean it out as I thought it would be. I hate cleaning out jack-o-lantern pumpkins because they're so stringy, stubborn, and slimy but this was much easier. The seeds scrape out easily with a spoon.
- I roasted the pumpkin at 325 degrees for about 2 hours. There was a ton of water in it that I dumped out when I was done roasting it! Then I scooped the flesh out of the shell (super easy) and I had to drain the water out again. I don't have a food processor but I do have an immersion blender. I just stuck that baby in the big bowl of pumpkin and it worked like a charm!
What to do with this abundance of pureed pumpkin in my freezer? Well, I've made quite a bit of pumpkin bread and hopefully I'll make some more and remember to take a picture of it for a future blog and I made pumpkin chocolate chip cookies that I *blech* didn't like (too, too cakey!). I really want to make pumpkin ravioli but I need to wait until I have a leeetle more time to do that. I also need to fetch my pasta maker from the Heights at some point. I think that pumpkin ravioli with brown butter and sage sounds fantastic! I digress . . .
The November issue of Bon Appetit had a recipe for Pumpkin Cheesecake with Marshmallow-Sour Cream Topping and Gingersnap Crust and as soon as I saw it I knew that I wanted to make it. I like pumpkin, I love gingersnaps, I like sour cream, and I love marshmallow. There was only one problem: I don't like cheesecake. Thanksgiving at my house is a sacred holiday and it's generally accepted that we do not mess with the desserts (no matter how often I plead the case for Thanksgiving cake) so I knew I wouldn't be making the pumpkin cheesecake for Thanksgiving. So, I waited for Dudley to arrive and then I made it for him!
The verdict: c'est bon! I had a bite of it and while I still don't like cheesecake, I thought it was pretty good. The crust is great, the filling is creamy, fluffy, pumpkin-y, spicy goodness, and the marshmallow sour cream topping is fantastic (and it's also essential because mine had unsightly cracks in the top). I think that it would be a great substitute for pumpkin pie . . . it's super rich though so I guess it depends on whether or not you have a propensity to overindulge during Thanksgiving dinner . . . guilty as charged here.
0 comments:
Post a Comment