Pumpkin-Ginger Soup

I used a friend’s recipe for this. It is boiled pumpkin with ginger and salt. I also added lemon juice and sage. It is topped with roasted almonds. The ginger has a nice bite, but I prefer pumpkin soup with carrot.

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Playing with my Food: Bread with Circles

This is another milk (part rye) loaf, topped with oatmeal flakes. I used pumpkin to keep it moist. Inside, I created a pattern of circles using Dutch-process cocoa powder and matcha powder.

I was inspired after looking at pictures of giraffe-, leopard- and watermelon-pattern bread.

Baking More Bread: Milk-Pumpkin-Chia-Hemp-Rye Loaf

I’ve been making a lot of bread lately because I realized I miss having toast in the mornings. This loaf has pumpkin, chia seeds, rye flour, and hemp flour and is topped with sunflower seeds. Incorporating a bit of fruit or vegetable mash seems to be my key to getting such nice breads reliably.

Oatmeal Pumpkin Chia Bread

This is another milk bread, which is my bread of choice because it stays soft and fresh for days, which is helpful when you know the bread won’t be completely eaten the day it is made. I added oat flakes to the scalded milk and melted butter and then added the yeast when it cooled. I combined this with a mix of wheat and rye flour, salt, lemon juice, chia seeds and pumpkin purée. After the first rise,when the bread was shaped, I brushed it with milk, sprinkled oat flakes on top, and cut it.

The pumpkin was not part of my original plan for this loaf, but after baking a pumpkin earlier in the week and preparing pumpkin pancakes (twice), pumpkin hemp bread and pumpkin cake, I still had some purée left which need to be used. I like the golden colour it gives the loaf and the flavour in the pumpkin hemp loaf was unobtrusive, so I figured I’d make use of the pumpkin before it went bad. Next time I should buy a smaller pumpkin, or prepare for pumpkin to again invade most of what I cook for a week!

I should probably also consider replacing my silicon bread pan with a firmer pan as the bread tends to bulge a lot at the sides (the overly-deep cut didn’t help, either).

Pumpkin Buttermilk Cake

Origin

I started with this recipe for pumpkin gingerbread.

Ingredients

For the cake

• 1/3 cup unsalted butter
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 3 eggs
• 2 cups puréed pumpkin
• 1 cup + 2 tablespoons buttermilk
• 1 teaspoon cloves
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon allspice
• 1 teaspoon ginger
• pinch of salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 3 cups flour

For the glaze

• powdered sugar
• lemon juice
• milk

Process

Preheat the oven to 350° Fahrenheit/180° Celsius. Butter a bundt pan.

Beat the butter and brown sugar together. Beat in the molasses, eggs and pumpkin  in turn, beating well after each addition.

Sift together the dry ingredients. Combine them and the buttermilk with the wet ingredients and mix until combined. Pour into the prepared cake pan and smooth the top.

Bake until a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean, about one hour. Allow to cool in the pan for half an hour, then turn out on a wire rack to finish cooling.

Allow the cake to sit overnight, covered, for the flavours to develop.

Mix the powdered sugar with a bit of lemon juice and enough milk to form a thick glaze. Drizzle the glaze over the cake and allow the cake to sit until the glaze dries.

Tropical Pumpkin Pancakes

Often pumpkin is seen as an autumn dish in colder climates. Certainly pumpkin pies, breads and soups are welcome when the weather gets cold. But pumpkin is also used in Suriname and Indian curries, so I decided to re-envision it in a more tropical setting by combining it with cocoa nibs, coconut, and date syrup.

Origin

I had no particular recipe in mind when I made these pancakes.

Ingredients

• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup pumpkin purée
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1/2 teaspoon ginger
• pinch of salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cubeb (optional)
• 1 tablespoon agave syrup
• 1/2 tablespoon ground cocoa nibs
• 2 tablespoons dessicated coconut flakes
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 2/3 cup milk
• 3/4 cup flour
• butter (to fry)
• date syrup (to serve)

Process

Heat a non-stick frying pan over medium heat. Melt some butter in the pan.

Combine the pumpkin, oil and egg, then add in the salt, ginger, cubeb, coconut, agave syrup, cocoa nibs and baking powder. Mix well, then add the milk and flour.

Pour spoonfuls of batter into the pan and cook until bubbles form in the centre of the pancakes and the top looks a bit dry. Flip them over and cook on the other side for a few minutes.

Serve with date syrup. Makes about 7 pancakes.

Rating: Somewhere around okay. I know I made it, but I’m not sure what I think of it except that it won’t be my new favourite. It’s missing something, but I’m not sure what.

Pumpkin Hemp Swirl Bread

Pumpkin purée and hemp flour were added to a simple milk loaf to create an attractive mix of colours without significantly altering the flavour. The end result is a pumpkin-hemp swirl loaf which tastes like a standard milk loaf unless it is toasted. When toasted, a nutty flavour develops.

I started making a basic milk loaf (I didn’t use a recipe, but I added scalded milk, melted butter, salt, yeast, sugar and lemon juice) with 2/3 white flour and 1/3 whole grain rye flour. I divided it into one part consisting of 2/3 the dough and one part with the remainder. To the larger amount of dough I added about one-third a cup of pumpkin purée, while the smaller portion received a similar quantity of hemp flour. After the first rise, I braided the dough and then kneaded it to create the pattern of hemp. The loaf was brushed with milk after the second rising and decorated with sunflower and pumpkin seeds.