I tried a whole pile of new recipes this weekend, and had most of them fail majorly!  Maybe I just don’t know what I’m doing with pumpkin puree … and would greatly appreciate any tips you may have for me!  Leave your comments below and I’ll give them a go the next time I feel the urge to cook with pumpkin.

So here’s the run-down of my weekend:

• I had some pumpkin leftover from when I made pumpkin soup for my lunches (recipe here) last week and I didn’t want to waste it.
• I had been reading lots of pumpkin-based cookie and slice recipes from my Twitter friends.
• It was raining and cold – perfect weather for baking.
• I made too many things, threw out most of them into the trash and ate too many of the things that remained.

Things that worked:

• Pumpkin soup – always a winner with me, using pumpkin, potatoes and a mixture of veggies – this time I included some almonds as well and ate it either with gluten-free bread, or rice cakes for lunches.  Very tasty!
• Thai chickpea pumpkin curry – this used an almond butter base, with lite coconut milk, pumpkin and zucchini.  From the bits I tasted while making it, I am going to enjoy my lunches this week!
• Pumpkin white chocolate oatmeal cookies – I think it was the small amount of pumpkin puree used here, and the white chocolate chips that made this cookie work.  Very moist but very more-ish!

Things that didn’t work:

• Pumpkin choc chip oatmeal cookies – this used 15 oz pumpkin puree and not that much oats – I added some more oats, but still it was an overpowering taste of pumpkin, and not that nice with the rest of the taste.
• Healthy pumpkin slice – this was kind of like a pumpkin pie, it needed some Cool Whip, but only sweetened by dates so relatively healthy.  Don’t get me wrong, this was yummy, but it just wasn’t what I was aiming for.

Things that I don’t know whether they worked or not:

• Henry’s birthday cake – I found a recipe in my new KitchenAid recipe book for a caramel banana torte and showed it to Henry, who immediately requested it for his birthday.  The cake worked well, just the filling didn’t set very well, so all the bananas in the middle kind of squished out while the cake was chilling overnight (tonight) … hopefully tomorrow with a pile of whipped cream on top and around it, no one will notice!
• Peanut butter banana blondies – Henry requested me to make some stuff for him to take to school for his birthday … specifically something with peanut butter, bananas, choc chips and M&M’s.  I found a recipe and it looked pretty impressive when it came out of the oven, but will have to wait until later this week to find out how they actually went.
• No-bake chocolate oat cookies – I had this recipe in my folder and we wanted to make something to say thank you to some people around here.  I used normal oats, so I couldn’t taste them, but the family say they worked ok.

 So that’s what’s going on in my life!  Remember, you can always comment on anything you see on this website, tell your friends and family about the website and encourage them to subscribe (that’s if you enjoy getting the updates from me …).  And any tricks or tips you may have for me for cooking with pumpkin, please let me know, otherwise I’ll just go back to making only pumpkin pie and not experimenting any more!

Until next time, enjoy cooking at home,

Sarah