Roasted Pumpkin and an idea what to do with it

In our quest to grow our own pumpkin for Halloween this year, our efforts rewarded us with 2 pumpkins, one we carved and made a lantern with, making puree with the insides to add to recipes, the other larger one needed a little more time to ripen up and I needed more time to decide what to do with it!



Yesterday I decided to roast it so I could again make puree to add to recipes, pumpkin freezes really well so we can use it up when we fancy. Rather than cutting the pumpkin up to roast (have you ever cut a large pumpkin into chunks? not an easy job and I value my fingers ;-) I gave it a wash, stabbed it a few times and put it into the oven whole. A little over an hour later tah daaah! one squishy roasted pumpkin, ready to pop into the blender, not forgetting to scoop out the seeds to roast for a healthy snack



Back in early summer when we planted our pumpkin seeds, I had dreams of our garden producing lots of pumpkins, so I started searching for things to do with them, a few times I found ideas teaming pumpkin and chocolate and an idea for adding swirls of chocolate spread to a cake batter, so today I have a recipe to share with you, incase your wondering what to do with all your lovely pumpkin

Pumpkin muffins with chocolate swirls



1 3/4 cups plain flour
1tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp mixed spice
1 1/2 cups caster sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup water
1 cup pumpkin puree
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
good amount of chocolate spread


In a large bowl mix together the sugar, oil, water, pumpkin, eggs and vanilla until smooth

Seive in the flour, baking powder, salt and mixed spice

Mix together to make the cakey batter and scoop into muffin cases

Warm the chocolate spread to loosen a little then spoon some into each muffin case swirling it around with the spoon.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180 for around 20 minutes

Watch them vanish in less time than it took to make them :-)