Pumpkin Season

Picking a Pumpkin in PA 2009

     Every year Pumpkin time nears I get so excited because you see every item pumpkin  flavored available. I know I do use pumpkin in the can but it is not the same as roasting a pumpkin yourself. Who am I kidding? The pumpkin from a can is so much easier when you cannot find pumpkin! Now I am talking 100% pumpkin not the pumpkin pie mix. My friends and I a couple years ago would find pumpkin in the store and buy a case at a time to split because it was so hard to find. So I stock up year round so I never run out, and have enough for the holidays; Thanksgiving, The Cookie Exchange, scrapping get togethers, Bon- fires, and Christmas.
     Here is a set of recipes I just made that you can add to your cookbook! It was actually inspired by two things. DD aka Dunkin Donuts and My Hubby. Since I love Pumpkin flavored coffee and I also I got an email telling me Pumpkin Coffee was now available; I had to make a coffee run. So David and I had errands to run so we made the stop. I was surprised that not only had DD come out with the coffee but all pumpkin inspired line. Coffee drinks, Ice Cream, Cream Cheese, Muffins and Donuts were all calling my name. I controlled myself and only ordered a few of these items. I had a mission to only buy the coffee, but the bagel with pumpkin smear called my name a little louder than all the others. As we headed to our next stop, I could not wait to try the bagel with Pumpkin cream cheese, right there in the car. Now I had it on a plain bagel toasted because I was not sure what it would taste like. It was better than I imagined and I was talking about how great it was and that David needed to try this right now! David does not cream cheese, sour cream, plain yogurt, ricotta cheese, yet his favorite food is lasagna and I do use it, or even cottage cheese. Any way I had him try it and he says " Babe, you could probably just make it. " I all the sudden was on cloud nine. Duh! Of course why couldn't I make it. I just had never considered making it. I felt excited and dumb all at the same time. After the errands I made one final stop to pick up half an half for the pumpkin coffee and cream cheese and a few extra cans of pumpkin.

My niece playing with the "pupmikin"seeds
2009 at Great Nana's House

     So this is what I came up with now the only reason I added sugar was because of my brother who also likes to add his tidbits of info as I am getting ready to start something said " You may want to add sugar or something...". So my original intention is to just add a 3/4 cup of pumpkin to one block of cream cheese and some pumpkin pie spice. BUT I decide to look up a recipe online. There was two one that wanted brown sugar and maple syrup...sounded too sweet. Another recipe that was calling for 1/4 cup of sugar... also too much sugar for my liking. So I came up with these two and both are equally awesome.

Pumpkin Pie Dip/Spread

1/2 cup of canned pumpkin
1 block of cream cheese room temp.
3/4 tsp of pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp of vanilla
1/8 of  a cup sugar

I whipped it in the blender til all fluffy and lighter in color. This was great as a spread on bagels, used on cut up apples too. Much more of a dip.

Now this recipe is just a little different but gives a more savory style cream cheese taste and great on bagels.

Pumpkin Paste

1 cup of pumpkin
1 block of cream cheese
1 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice
1/2 tsp of cardamom
1/4 tsp of ginger
1 tbsp of dark brown sugar

AMAZINGLY great! This recipe I did not whip. I turned the mixer on and let the cream cheese mix a little to make sure it was not cold  and added the sugar to the cream cheese til it was mixed in. I mixed all the spices into the pumpkin first and then folded in the pumpkin and just mixed til all combined. It was richer in color and much more savory.

 Happy Pumpkin Season!