After my disastrous attempt at trying to bake with pumpkin puree previously (see here) I thought I’d try again.  After all, how will I find that ultimate pumpkin cookie recipe if I don’t have a few failures along the way.  I guess it’s kind of like when I was on a quest for my ultimate chocolate peanut butter slice recipe – I had many failures and those that just didn’t dazzle before I came up with this one (recipe here).

So my adventures this time with pumpkin:

• Layered pumpkin cheesecake

This was actually for my quest in the US National Food Day Challenge (see here), but I made a pumpkin cheesecake, with a crust made of granola, then a layer of ‘normal’ cheesecake, then a layer of pumpkin flavoured cheesecake.  It was ok, we ate it all, but it wasn’t exactly a fantastic eating experience.  I think the cheesecake layer needed a little more lightness, a little less cream cheese.  I went to a gluten-free expo the same weekend and tried a commercial layered pumpkin cheesecake – mine wasn’t anywhere in the same ball-park so I’ve got more work to do if I want to find a decent recipe for this!

• Pumpkin creme bar

Yeah, this was a failure that ended in the bin.  It sounded like a good idea, all healthy ingredients, using coconut milk, and pumpkin puree for the filling, pecans and dates for the crust, but the taste, and the texture just wasn’t there.  It may have been that we ate it straight out of the freezer (which we prefer to do with the healthy bars and slices) but the pumpkin filling was really icy and didn’t have any real decent taste to it.  I won’t be trying this recipe again!

• Pumpkin chocolate chip cookie challenge

I read on the internet that pumpkin puree can be used as a substitute for eggs – with 1 egg being the equivalent of 1/4 cup of pumpkin puree.  So I thought I’d give the guys at work a taste test to find which pumpkin chocolate chip recipe they preferred and whether it was good enough to put on this website.  So I used Sally’s chocolate chip cookie recipe (here) and substituted pumpkin puree for the egg, and added some pumpkin pie spice as well.  I found another recipe that was actually designed to be gluten-free and using pumpkin puree and oats but adapted it slightly also, since it used white chocolate chips and cinnamon chips and I wanted the two recipes to be as close as possible.  The verdict?  Well, since I’m still getting used to my new oven, I overcooked one batch of the oat cookies but out of the people that tried the cookies (and replied to me), it was almost equal with Sally’s recipe edging out the other one by one vote.  Combining that with my family’s votes, though, and the gluten-free / oat recipe won!

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Until next time, enjoy cooking at home

Sarah