This season, we grew a small selection of pumpkins from our range here at Kings Seeds. We harvested them about a month ago and left them to mature.

For our demo day, we made some pumpkin displays. Deb and Karen also spent some time carving a few pumpkins for the display. Our staff members did some cooking at home, making all sorts of pumpkin-based goodies to serve to the customers who came along on the day.

Jude gave a talk about pumpkins, and Carolyn gave a demo on how to harvest the edible hull-less seeds out of her Austrian Oil Seed pumpkins. The pumpkins on display had plenty of admirers....the stars of the show were definitely Galeux d'Eysines, with its warty skin, and Musquee de Provence, with its beautiful outer colouring and deep orange flesh.

Camilla, Jen, Jude and Liz did some cooking at home and we had pumpkin pie, pumpkin spice cake, pumpkin soup and pumpkin smoothies available for customers to try. Liz found and made a very cool recipe for pumpkin dog biscuits and some people tried them too! The food was so popular that we promised that we would post the recipes here on the blog, so here they are. We hope you enjoy trying some of these out!

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Pumpkin Spice Cake

125 g butter
1½ Cups sugar
2 eggs
1 Cup cooked pumpkin pulp (2 Cups raw pumpkin)
²/₃ Cup sour milk (add 1 t vinegar to ²/3 Cup milk)
1¾ Cups flour
2 t baking powder
1 t salt
1 t baking soda
2 t cinnamon
_½ t nutmeg
_½ t ginger

• Cream butter and sugar until fluffy.
• Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each.
• Combine pumpkin pulp with sour milk.
• Sift together the dry ingredients and add to butter mixture alternately with the pumpkin mixture.
• Bake in a greased and floured 23mm square tin at 180^oC for 50 minutes.
• Ice with vanilla butter icing.

Vanilla Butter Icing

125g softened butter
1 ½ Cups sifted icing sugar
1-2 teaspoons vanilla essence

• Cream the ingredients together, adding a little boiling water to give a fluffy consistency.

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Roasted Pumpkin

The following four recipes use roasted pumpkin. To roast, wipe the pumpkin clean and cut in half down the middle. Scoop out the seeds and lightly brush inside and out with olive oil. Place cut side down on a sheet of baking paper and roast at 210^oC for 30-40 minutes. or until a fork will push through easily Turn flesh side up and roast for a further 10 minutes. Remove from oven, cover with a clean tea towel and cool.

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Pumpkin Soup

200g bacon, chopped
2 cloves of garlic
2 t curry powder
1 whole pumpkin (about 1 kg), peeled and chopped

• Fry bacon, garlic and curry powder together in oil in a large pot.
• Add pumpkin pieces and barely cover with water. Simmer until pumpkin is cooked.

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Pumpkin Pie

Sweet shortcrust pastry
1½ Cups of peeled roasted pumpkin
375ml tin evaporated milk
3 eggs
1/3 Cup caster sugar
½ t vanilla extract
1 t grated nutmeg
½ t ground ginger
½ t five spice powder
pinch salt

• Line a 24cm flan tin with sweet shortcrust pastry and rest in the fridge for 5 minutes. Blind bake at 200^oC for 10 minutes. Remove the baking beans and bake for a further 5 minutes, then set aside to rest.
• Blend roasted pumpkin with ¼ Cup evaporated milk in a food processor or blender, until you have a smooth puree.
• Beat eggs and sugar until they have doubled in volume and the mixture is pale and ribbony. Add vanilla extract and pumpkin/milk puree and fold together. Add nutmeg, ginger, five spice and salt and the rest of the tin of evaporated milk. Pour into the pastry shell.
• Bake at 200^oC for 10 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 170^oC and bake for a further 35-40 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean.
• Serve with cream and/or sour cream.

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Pumpkin Smoothie

1 Cup peeled roasted pumpkin.
1 Banana
1 Cup yogurt or almond milk
½ Cup ice
2-3 T honey
1 t vanilla extract
Juice of 2 oranges

• Blend all ingredients together until smooth.

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Pumpkin Dog Biscuits

• Preheat oven to 175°C. Line a baking sheet with baking paper.
• Mix together the mashed roasted pumpkin and the sugar. Add the eggs and mix, and then mix the oil and the water.
• Stir in the flax seeds (linseed) and then mix in the flour until you have a stiff dough.
• Roll out the dough and cut into strips or shapes. Bake for 40 minutes until light golden. Leave to cool and store in an airproof container. Good as dog treats.

Thanks for reading our blog... We hope you enjoy these recipes!

PS: If you want to read about how to grow GIANT PUMPKINS, you can read the blog post we wrote about that by clicking here.