Three Tins Of Pumpkin In One Week!

Yep, that's right, I have been eating a lot of pumpkin this week! I must phone/visit Waitrose soon to check they've got pumpkin back in stock - I've only got one tin left in the cupboard now! Has anyone seen tinned pumpkin in their Waitrose yet?

I used two of the tins of pumpkin right at the start of the week, to make Oh She Glow's Pumpkin Butter. This recipe seemed really simple, and indeed turned out great. The only thing I would say, though, is make sure you've got enough time to spend the whole cooking time in the kitchen. I started making it about an hour before I had to go out on Monday. The recipe said 35-45 minutes cooking time so I thought this would be fine - I figured I could get myself and Toby ready in between stirring it, and then leave it to cool while we were out. The recipe does say that it needs stirring "frequently", but what it really means is "constantly" - it turned into a 'volcano', making a huge mess over the oven, when it wasn't being stirred. I find that passata acts like this when heated too, strange. Anyway, the pumpkin butter was worth the stirring time, it is so versatile - I have spent most of the week eating it!

I used two standard size tins of Libby's pumpkin to make this (the recipe calls for 1 29oz tin, but when I converted that into grams I realised that was actually two of our tins) and it made one very full jar for me, plus some for my Mum to try (she didn't want too much) and a little, unpictured, amount for my Grandma...

This is really tasty just from the spoon - sweet but not too sweet. On Tuesday morning I decided to have some on a bagel, but first I opened a third tin of pumpkin to make Musings of a Violet Monkey's Spiced Pumpkin Cream Cheese to go with it.

Yes, I did buy that mini pumpkin just for these photos/decoration - I've been envious of all the American bloggers' decorations!!

I love this. The only downside was that Lidl don't sell Philadelphia cream cheese so I had to use own brand, which was a bit runnier. The flavours were still amazing though, and lesson learnt that next time I'll walk a bit further to buy the decent cream cheese!

So some uses of my pumpkin products...

• A cinnamon raisin bagel with pumpkin cream cheese and pumpkin butter:

I loved the combination of the pumpkin cream cheese and the pumpkin butter - winner!

• Yoghurt (in this case Rachel's coconut) with pumpkin butter and granola:

Loved this. The pumpkin butter works as well with cold foods as it does with hot. It added a really nice lightly sweet and spicy flavour to the yoghurt.

• Pumpkin porridge with pumpkin butter and Justin's chocolate peanut butter:

I adored this. How could I not? For the porridge I just used oats, milk, pumpkin and vanilla stevia, as the spices were coming from the pumpkin butter. The chocolate peanut butter was a great addition too - pumpkin + chocolate is always fantastic!

• Apple slices dipped in pumpkin cream cheese:

Izzy and I shared this as an after-school snack. A yummy alternative to peanut butter, although Toby didn't like the mess it made on his fingers!

I still have some pumpkin butter and pumpkin cream cheese left for when I get back from Bath, but they will be good to use for a while yet. I wanted to use the last of the third tin of pumpkin before we went away though, so yesterday (Friday) afternoon I made these...

I'll blog this recipe sometime next week as this post is getting long already. These are really tasty though - Toby and I shared two of them and then I put the rest in the freezer before they disappeared too!! Now I know that I can give Izzy cake in her lunchbox, these will make a great option for an occasional treat as I can just take one out of the freezer the night before I want to give it to her.

What are your favourite seasonal recipes at the moment? Do you find yourself doing more baking at certain times of the year? The blog world seems to be awash with pumpkin recipes at the moment! And apple, that's another ingredient I love to use. I'd like to start making more savoury recipes though as Liam doesn't eat any of my fruity baking so I end up eating a lot more of it myself than I probably should!!! In winter I do find myself doing a lot more baking though, it's a good way to warm myself up aside from anything else! I'm planning to make a lot of foodie treats to give as Christmas presents this year also, but I'll discuss that in another post nearer the time!