It's pumpkin time!
Nov. 1st, 2020 08:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nosrednaydujAfter Halloween comes processing pumpkins! We didn't buy any this year ourselves, but we managed to score some from church friends who were using them primarily as decoration before Halloween. We got two large and two small. One of the large ones appeared to have a couple of bad spots, so I processed it tonight. I processed it in the instant pot, rather than baking, but it was so large that I could only get half of it, even chopped up, into the pot. So, I'm not really sure that this saved either time or energy. It's also possible the instant pot produces a waterier product than baking, which maybe I don't prefer.
I got a total of 8 1/2 cups, which I actually thought was kind of paltry for the size of pumpkin. Being large, it's not incredibly tasty, but it's not too bad. I have higher hopes for the small ones, but we're now using those as decoration. I'm freezing them in 1.5 cup aliquots, and also 3/4 cup aliquots. This enables me to make one or one and a half recipes of pumpkin squares, and also to use 3/4 cup to substitute for half the butter in cookies (which I also did this evening, making pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, although the pumpkin flavor was not really all that obvious in the baked cookie.) (Usually I substitute applesauce, the pumpkin is a lark.)
My goal with pumpkin is to have enough to make a batch (or batch and a half) a month of pumpkin squares, which means I need about 20-25 cups in the freezer in November. Plus pumpkin pies. We also managed to get a roadkill Hubbard squash a few weeks ago, which gave me 7 cups. So probably I'm good. Last year I ended with 1.5 cups still in the freezer (enough for one batch). So that was pretty good. I will have to make sure to decant that one soon, it wouldn't be good to have it try for its second year. They do get a little freezer burned towards the end, but because what I'm doing is mixing it into baked goods, that's okay.
I got a total of 8 1/2 cups, which I actually thought was kind of paltry for the size of pumpkin. Being large, it's not incredibly tasty, but it's not too bad. I have higher hopes for the small ones, but we're now using those as decoration. I'm freezing them in 1.5 cup aliquots, and also 3/4 cup aliquots. This enables me to make one or one and a half recipes of pumpkin squares, and also to use 3/4 cup to substitute for half the butter in cookies (which I also did this evening, making pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, although the pumpkin flavor was not really all that obvious in the baked cookie.) (Usually I substitute applesauce, the pumpkin is a lark.)
My goal with pumpkin is to have enough to make a batch (or batch and a half) a month of pumpkin squares, which means I need about 20-25 cups in the freezer in November. Plus pumpkin pies. We also managed to get a roadkill Hubbard squash a few weeks ago, which gave me 7 cups. So probably I'm good. Last year I ended with 1.5 cups still in the freezer (enough for one batch). So that was pretty good. I will have to make sure to decant that one soon, it wouldn't be good to have it try for its second year. They do get a little freezer burned towards the end, but because what I'm doing is mixing it into baked goods, that's okay.
