My family really likes pumpkin, but none of us like the taste of canned pumpkin. Every year I harvest pumpkins we’ve grown along with several store-bought pumpkins and I process them for storage. I dry some in the dehydrator and grind that into what I call pumpkin flour, and I also put pumpkin in the electric roaster and bake. Then I mash and freeze that, so instead of purchasing canned pumpkin when someone wants pumpkin we use frozen.
Last week, I started processing pumpkins.
I started with several batches in the dehydrator. I cut, dried and ground until the first of the containers I use for storing pumpkin flour was full. At that point, I had about half a pumpkin left. Since i was done for the moment, I used the remaining pumpkin to make mashed pumpkin for dinner. It’s a simple recipe similar to making mashed potatoes:
Peel the pumpkin with a vegetable peeler.
Cook like you would any other squash until you can pierce the pumpkin with a fork.
Add pumpkin and butter to mixing bowl. Use mixer or hand blender until smooth.
My family loves this, and they eat a LOT of it, but there was some left. Usually my kids love leftovers, but we haven’t been home much the last couple days, and we’ve been eating a lot of portable food— foods easy to take with us when we are away from home.
This morning, I realized the left over mashed pumpkin was still in the fridge. It’s been in there a couple days and needed to be used. So I decided to make muffins with it.
This isn’t going to be much of a recipe. That’s because I really did not expect these to turn out. I threw the “recipe” together as I was making it, and I eyeballed everything.
I was wrong. These “custard muffins” are really good. So good, in fact, that my almost 12-year-old daughter devoured 8 half-sized muffins a few minutes after we took them out of the oven. I finally had to tell her to lay off and leave some for her dad and brother.
So, since these are such a huge hit with the pre-teen, I thought I’d share the recipe– or what there is of one.
I had about 4 cups of mashed pumpkin left, and I used all of it.
To the 4 cups of mashed pumpkin I added:
6 eggs
several small scoops of pure stevia powder.
I used the whisk attachment on my hand blender to blend the ingredients together.
Then, I greased my regular-sized and my half-sized muffin pans. The regular sized muffin pans took 1/4 cup of pumpkin mixture for each muffin and the half sized pan used that same 1/4 cup of mixture for two muffins.
I baked these at 350 deg for about 30 minutes.
When they came out, I used a knife to loosen the muffins from the pan.
Hot, they taste like pumpkin muffins but have the texture of a really thick custard. The big pan is still cooling in the fridge, so I can’t tell you how or if the texture changes as they cool.
But.. these are definitely kid approved.
The photos below are compliments of my daughter. She took them with my phone, so the quality might not be the best.
