Pumpkin Butter and my ridiculous amount of pumpkin puree!

Pumpkin puree and all the ingredients for delicious Pumpkin Butter!

I hate to waste food.

On Saturday night T. went to the store. He came home with a huge pumpkin (one helluva an impulse buy I would say!) for $.99. His idea was that he could open the pumpkin and take the seeds and make some more roasted pumpkin seeds. What to do with the rest of the pumpkin? He wanted to throw it out! Guess what I did ALL day Monday? Roasted and pureed a great big pumpkin.

I had to do this in 3 batches as the pumpkin was soooo big! Here is what I did:

Cleaned out the guts and set them aside.
Cut the pumpkin into chunks and used a vegetable peeler to remove the skin.
Lined a sheet pan with foil and placed as many chunks of pumpkin I could fit.
Placed them in a 400 ° oven (thanks Dharm it works!)
Roasted them until they were fork tender.
Allowed them to cool and then in batches I pureed them in my food processor.
I then placed 3 cups of cooled pumpkin puree in quart Ziploc bags and plopped them in the freezer.

Today I decided to make pumpkin butter out of some of the puree. Turned out wonderful. The girls loved this on some fresh made bread for an afternoon snack!


Pumpkin Butter

Ingredients:

1½ cups (or one 15-oz can) of pumpkin puree
¼ cup brown sugar
2 Tbsp white sugar
¼ tsp ground ginger
¼ tsp ground cloves
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
½ tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground allspice
¼ cup water or apple juice

Directions:

1. In a large saucepan, combine all ingredients.
2. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly.
3. Reduce heat to low.
4. Let mixture simmer for approximately 30 minutes to an hour or until it thickens.
5. Stir frequently.

My house smelled incredible while this was cooking and the girls love it. I will definitely be making this again!

As Always...

Happy Entertaining!!!

Judy
www.nofearentertaining.com