Family Umlaut

21 Oct 2016

Homemade Pumpkin Butter

Normally, I get lots of inspiration for my cooking and baking
by reading food and cookery magazines.
It is one of my guilty pleasures. 
I know they're expensive and I know I also pay for the adverts in them
and I also know that I probably will NEVER look at some of them again
 after I have read them for the first time. 
But still.
I buy them. 
I LOVE THEM!
And I keep them.
All of them.

But I also love some Instagrammers and Bloggers who share their 
cake and lunch and dinner recipes and family feeding routines with their readers. 

But the idea to make Pumpkin Butter
came from reading a German blog.
One of the benefits of living a bilingual life
is to be able to read more blogs in various languages.

Mary Kotter tells us how to make Pumpkin Butter
in a Thermomix. 
I don't own one, though, and I am quite certain that I never will.
But would that stop me from making the pumpkin butter from scratch?
In a conventional pot on a conventional hob?
Exactly.
No.

It still quite easy to make that way.
And it is DELICIOUS!
And the smell we had in the house while the pumpkin and spices
 bubbled in the pot was really really nice.
Autumn-y and sweet and cinnamon-y yummy.

Here we go! Get the pumpkin that you had originally bought
to turn into Halloween decorations and make 
Pumpkin Butter instead.
Well, that's what I did.
I will have to get a new pumpkin for carving now, the girl said.

Anyway.
Get your pumpkin, wash it, saw off the stem end the non-edible bits
and chop it into rather thick cubes. 

Take 400grams of the prepared pumpkin chunks and put them into a pot.
Add 150ml apple juice and 150ml water,
1tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp ground ginger, 3 dried cloves or a pinch of ground ones,
 a pinch of ground nutmeg and a pinch of ground allspice
and bring to the boil. 
Reduce the heat and simmer the pumpkins with the juices and the spices
until they're soft. 
Remove the cloves.
Add 150grams of sugar.
Blitz everything with a hand-held blender until it is really really smooth and lump-less. 

Now, leave it to boil at a moderate heat
until it had thickened to a spreadable consistency.
This process may take a good while. 
You need to keep stirring regularly that it does not burn 
or stick to the bottom of the pot.

When the pumpkin mousse starts to thicken, 
the bubbling will turn into a splattering.
I had covered the pot with a sieve to keep the mess around the pot at bay.

Once your Pumpkin Butter is nice and thick and sweet and "ready",
you need to fill it into a clean jar and keep it in the fridge after it has cooled down. 



It won't last as long as jam would because of the relatively low
sugar content (Haha, I know!) , but it should stay okay for a week.
If you don't eat it at the first day.
It is hard to resist. 

Oh, you can freeze the Pumpkin Butter, too.

I will use the it to make Pumpkin Butter rolls tomorrow.
And I might share that recipe here, too.
If they turn out nice. 
 We'll see.

Lena



Ingredients:
400gms prepared pumpkin meat
150ml apple juice
150ml water
150gms sugar
1tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
some ground nutmet
some ground allspice