How to Bake a Pumpkin & Pumpkin Pie Bars

We've been having fun just slowing down, which means spending a bit of time with our pumpkins. Here's what we did with our sugar pie pumpkins.

How to Bake a Pumpkin

Quarter pumpkin.



Work with a friend to scoop out the seeds. (Of course, save a few of the seeds for planting next year and the rest for roasting.)



Place the quartered pumpkin in an oven proof bowl. Drizzle with a bit of olive oil. Pour about 3 cups of water over the pumpkin. Cover and bake for about an hour (or until soft) in a 350 degree oven.




Scoop out pumpkin and purée in a blender.



And then, make whatever pumpkin goodies your little hearts desire.
Here's our pumpkin pie bars. So yummy!



Here's our recipe (made up that very day):

Pumpkin Pie Bars
Ingredients:

Bars:
2 cups flour (we used 1 cup of teff flour and 1 cup buckwheat)
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup olive oil (or whatever oil you like to bake with)
puréed pumpkin from one average-sized sugar pie pumpkin
3 eggs (we used Ener-G egg replacer)

Topping:
Mix a little powdered sugar with a bit of milk (we used soy)

Directions:
Combine dry ingredients. Add wet ingredients and mix thoroughly.
Bake in a 350 degree oven for 25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Drizzle topping and let cool. Cut into bars.

Jack-O-Lantern Stew

We always host a potluck meal on Halloween night with friends, and I usually make stew in a pumpkin. This year, running short on time for my usually 7 hour recipe, we used one of these wonderful, tasty Cinderella pumpkins and did a simple pumpkin and black-eyed pea combination that I will have to work hard to recreate as it wasn't a recipe. Served with black wild rice, it was a definite hit!

Tomorrow, I head to the fourth and final potluck of the weekend, so I will try to recreate it for that and this time write down the measurements and ingredients. Until then, hope you had a fun-filled Halloween night!