Proving the Pumpkin Point Part 2

So, just to prove it to my husband and to any other skeptics out there that pumpkin makes delicious desserts, here's the recipe for pumpkin and maple fairy cakes. They're sweet and spicy and delicious with a very nice flavour contrast between the sweet spicy cake and the slightly sharper cream cheese icing.

(Makes 12 fairy cakes)

Ingredients:

200g pumpkin, deseeded and cubed

1 and half cups of plain flour

pinch of salt

1 tspn baking powder

half tspn cinnamon

quarter tspn cloves

quarter tspn ground ginger

half cup of sugar

2 large eggs

6 tbspns butter

quarter cup of milk

quarter cup real maple syrup

200g cream cheese

200g icing sugar

1 tbspn water

2 tspns lemon juice

1. Roast the pumpkin in the oven 400F/ 200C for about 45mins

2. beat together the sugar and butter until smooth then add the eggs one at a time, beating thoroughly in between to get air into the batter.

3. Mix the flour, spices, salt and baking powder.

4. Liquidise the pumpkin, maple syrup and milk together.

5. Add the flour mix and the pumpkin mix to the batter, alternately a bit at a time, stirring in between with a metal spoon, trying to keep the air in as much as possible.

6. Spoon the mixture into 12 paper cases in a bun tin.

7. Bake at 160C/ 350F for 25 minutes then remove from the bun tin and cool on a rack.

8. Once they have cooled, beat the cream cheese, icing sugar, water and lemon juice together and spread generously over the cooled cakes. Perfect treats for the office, which is exactly where I  brought the 6 I had left today.

Proving the Pumpkin Point Part 1

This weekend I got into an argument with my husband about whether or not pumpkin can successfully be used in desserts. Americans treat it almost universally as a dessert ingredient from what I can gather, most typically of course in pumpkin pie, that Thanksgiving favourite (a recipe for which I will be sharing nearer the time). My husband disagrees, he thinks it's a vegetable so should be made only into savoury things, even though he has a really sweet tooth. I don't have much of a sweet tooth but I'm a big fan of vegetables so versatile that you can make them into savoury food AND dessert. Come to think of it, I'm a big fan of anything that can pull off being main course and dessert. Anyway, in celebration of the start of autumn, I decided to conjour up a couple of pumpkin-based treats just to prove the versatility of this delightful big orange gem. The first one is Pumpkin gnocchi, at the request of my husband, the second is pumpkin and maple fairy cakes, made to prove to him that pumpkin does make delicious desserts! I have to say I'm pretty impressed with how the fairy cakes turned out too, especially since, as I said, I'm not really a sweet tooth so I don't often make cakes and this, like my others, is a recipe of my own invention.

One piece of advice before we begin though, those big pumpkins you get for carving at Halloween are often very hollow, as I discovered to my annoyance and my husband's smugness (he told me as much and I said he was being ridiculous so I suppose my trek round all the local greengrocers looking for a good eating pumpkin yesterday afternoon serves me right).

Now without further ado I shall show you that Gnocchi is a very easy thing to make and the fresh homemade stuff is especially delicious and worth the mashing.

(Serves 6)

Ingredients:

500g potatoes (boiled and mashed)

500g pumpkin (deseeded and cut into 2 inch cubes)

2 beaten eggs

400g plain flour

4 tbspns butter

large handful fresh sage, shredded

black pepper and freshly grated parmesan to serve

1. Roast the pumpkin at 400F/ 200C for 45 mins

2. Mash the potatoes and pumpkin together

3. Add the egg and flour and need it together until you have a nice elastic dough

4. Dust your work surface with flour, and roll the dough out into inch wide strips

5. Cut the strips into individual gnocchi

6. Get a big pan of water boiling then cook a few gnocchi at a time until they float to the surface. As they float to the surface, scoop them out with a slotted spoon, throw them in a dish keeping warm in the oven and drop a few more into the pan to cook.

7. Once they are all cooked, melt the butter in a large frying pan and fry the shredded sage over a medium heat until it begins to crisp up. Add the gnocchi to the pan and toss around for a few minutes.

8. Sprinkle with black pepper and fresh Parmesan and away you go.