I Get it All From My Mom

Okay, for all of you who say I'm such the "Martha Stewart"...well I learned from the best and I keep on learning. Today I learned how to make homemade pumpkin for baking. The reason being is because on Thursday we went to Waitrose in the mall to buy canned pumpkin (it's the only place in Peterborough to buy it). To my surprise and dismay they were out of pumpkin and didn't think they would be getting any more. Now you are probably wondering why am I so freaked out about having pumpkin on hand, Halloween's over right? Well, I am going to be hosting a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for my "international" neighbors on Thanksgiving and I must have pumpkin pie for them!!! So my motto over here has been, if you can't buy it, make it from scratch. We had bought 4 pumpkins for carving this year, so we only carved 2 of them when I found out I would have to use them for other purposes.

My mom jumped right in on Saturday and started showing me how to prepare "baking" pumpkin and for any of you interested in learning how to make your own pumpkin here is the pictoral along with instructions:


First you wash the outside of the pumpkins to remove any dirt from sitting your pumpkin outside for the past few weeks. Next with a HUGE knife, cut the pumpkin in half, empty out the seeds and gunk and lay the pumpkins cut side down in a large baking dish with a bit of water. Bake the pumpkin for about an hour at 350F (or 160C in a fan assisted oven like my own).

Once it's done you'll really start to smell the yummy pumpkin smell and you can poke your fingers (carefully - it's really hot) in the side of the pumpkin and it will feel soft. Once you take it out it may deflate like this one...it's pretty cool to see it shrink!
Once the pumpkin cools down a bit, start scraping out the cooked pumpkin into a blender and let 'er rip!!!

Next measure out amounts that you would typically use in a recipe into freezer bags. A can of pumpkin is now about 15 oz so that is 1 2/3 cups. Most recipes call for 2 cups of pumpkin because cans used to hold 16 oz (2 cups) and then over the years I'm sure to shave a few cents off cost they dropped it down to 15 oz and sold it at the same price!!! According to my Betty Crocker Cookbook with fresh pumpkin you don't need the full two cups I guess since it is more "liquidy."

Lastly you seal it with a smile and let cool before you put it in the freezer. My large pumpkin yielded about 5 bags and the small pumpkin gave me 3 bags. Of course with the size of freezer I have I better use most of it up in the next month because the bags are taking up about 1/8 of my freezer space if you can believe it.