Pumpkin Granola with Buckwheat & Pepitas

It seems like over the past few months, pumpkin granola has leaped into the forefront of "it can be paleo and still granola" as well as many "skinny" (aka low-fat / no-fat / we'll prove we can use less or no oil and not use apple sauce") recipes. Certainly, if you got here by googling "pumpkin granola," you probably noticed how many recipes came from this year -- and how many are grain free or say you can use pumpkin instead of canola oil.

These things are not what I was thinking about when I decided I wanted to experiment with a pumpkin granola recipe. Instead, I thought about the granolas I've already made this fall, and how pumpkin granola seemed like a fun and tasty late autumn breakfast. I thought about how much I like pumpkin things (and how my parents didn't make them when I was growing up). I thought about how easy it is to find pumpkin at the store right now, both fresh and in cans.

And I thought, well, why not?

With this recipe, I use buckwheat, a gluten-free (un)grain (we treat it as a grain, but it's technically a psuedo-cereal and not a grain at all). I secretly really wanted to use millet, but I seem to be able to handle millet only in small amounts. Working with buckwheat can be a bit harder -- if you cook it first, it turns into a somewhat gelatinous blob and doesn't look very appealing. Fortunately, it doesn't really need to be cooked beforehand to be soft enough to chew. I used raw buckwheat, as opposed to kasha, because I was going to stick it in the oven anyway, and because kasha tends to be more expensive than regular buckwheat.

Pumpkin seeds add a little additional protein to this granola. I suggest 1/3-1/2 cup because they can be kind of spendy, but feel free to add more if you like -- or to wait and add them until you're ready to eat your granola.

As with most of my recipes now, this is gluten-free and vegan. If you store the granola in an air-tight container (I like storing it in jars), it should keep for about 2 weeks -- if you live in a humid climate, maybe not quite as long.

Pumpkin Granola with Buckwheat & Pepitas
4 cups GF rolled oats
2/3 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3-1/2 cup raw pumpkin seeds

1 cup pumpkin puree mixed with 2/3 cup water

Preheat oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix all dry ingredients together in a medium-sized bowl, and then add the pumpkin puree mixture. Spread evenly onto a cookie sheet. Bake 40-50 minutes, stirring the granola to break up the pieces about 30 minutes into the baking time. Remove from oven and allow to cool. If the granola still feels wet (and this is dependent on your climate, mostly) once it's cooled completely, return to the oven and bake at 300 for another 15 minutes.

Baked Butternut Squash Oatmeal with Quinoa

My friend Rachael recently came to visit and we spent lovely days baking, cooking, hiking, and talking. One morning, we went out to breakfast. One morning we cooked together. One morning, I made this dish, based on a baked oatmeal recipe from a cookbook Rachael brought with her called Simply in Season. It seemed like a delightful base recipe to prep us for a long hike and it's nice to eat seasonal foods, even when some of my ingredients come from a can (more on this later).

Why this dish? When we were planning our day, the evening before Rachael said she'd never had baked oatmeal--not true, I reminded her. When we both still lived in the Midwest and ate breakfast together on Friday mornings with two other friends, I'd made a baked oatmeal recipe a handful of times. Baked oatmeal was something introduced to me a year ago this past summer, at a retreat center I stayed at while on a field trip focused on sustainable agriculture.

One of the lovely things about baked oatmeal is that it's warm, hearty, and can be prepped the night before. The recipe from Simply in Season did not recommend mixing everything the night before and then just sticking it in the oven. But, you could do this, I think, based on my previous baked oatmeal experiences. This is especially good if you're rushed in the morning. And, you could make this vegan by substituting the egg for either a commercial egg replacer, or a flax seed egg. You don't have to use the quinoa, if you don't have any on hand, but I wanted to include it to up the protein a little. If you decide to leave it out, you should increase the oatmeal to 2 cups.

We used butternut squash, because that's the puree I had on hand. At times, I might make my own rather than buying processed, but honestly I could pick up these cans of organic butternut puree for ridiculously cheap and it wasn't nearly as labor-intensive, and when I have butternut squash I've baked, I really just want to eat it. Immediately. You could also use pumpkin for this, or applesauce (as the original recipe suggests).

You could use pumpkin pie spice for this, if you didn't have these spices on hand, or leave the spices out entirely--the original recipe didn't use spices. I might have also added cardamom, if I'd thought about it early enough, but this combination of spices created a lovely taste reminiscent of autumn.

Note: although I've labeled this gluten-free, some people with Celiacs and gluten-sensitivity also do badly with oats, including gluten-free oats. If you are one of these people, or preparing this for someone who is gluten-sensitive or gluten-intolerant, please check to make sure GF oats are okay.

Baked Butternut Squash Oatmeal with Quinoa
Dry Ingredients
1 3/4 cups old fashioned rolled oats (GF)
1/4 cup quinoa
1/4 cup demerara sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 cup raisins (or other chopped, dried fruit, optional)
3 tablespoons chopped almonds (optional)*

Spices
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cloves

Wet Ingredients
1 cup milk (I used coconut)
1/2 cup butternut squash puree
1 tablespoon oil
1 egg

Combine the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Mix in the spices.

Add the wet ingredients and mix until well incorporated.

Bake in an oven preheated to 350 degrees, in a greased 8 x 8 pan (or equivalent) 25-30 minutes, until a knife stuck in the center comes out moist, but clean. Serve warm with milk.

*I didn't incorporate the almonds, but left them chopped, on the side to be added later. You could also use walnuts or pecans, if you prefer.

Chocolate Pumpkin Cake

Okay, so the name is a bit deceptive. Maybe more than a bit. The only thing that's pumpkin about this cake is the color and (kinda) the shape. E's boyfriend asked for a "very moist" chocolate cake for his birthday and he wanted it pumpkin-themed. The cake, not the birthday (though a pumpkin-themed birthday would be pretty sweet--coming from someone who loves carrot cake and pumpkin bread).

Those were his requirements. When E shared this, I immediately started looking up recipes for moist chocolate cake. But I'm skeptical of any recipe that informs me that it's moist. If you need to advertise it, usually I think you're lying. Or at least not being fully honest. Eventually, I fell back to a recipe I've used (and made gluten-free) several times, the vegan chocolate avocado cake on Joy the Baker's website. If you're interested in the gluten-free version, please take a moment to look at those modifications.


At first E seemed skeptical. "Avocado?" she asked from the other end of our dining room table. 


I nodded and she wrote it on her shopping list.


We only made the cake part of Joy the Baker's vegan chocolate avocado cake, and then added (non-vegan) orange frosting to the outside. The orange frosting came from a bag (which was a total revelation to me--I didn't know you could buy frosting mix--and now, after watching E put it together, I'm not sure why you would. To me, it seemed like selling really expensive confectioners sugar and vanilla since we still had to add milk and butter to the mix. The frosting turned out super-thick and in an attempt to make it just a little thinner E added too much milk and made it a bit runny--which was fine, since we had extra confectioners sugar and could thicken it back up some.). We added orange (well, yellow and red) coloring after making up the frosting.


We did decide to make this a layered cake, so I also made a chocolate frosting from cocoa powder, butter, sugar, and non-fat yogurt. I didn't measure ingredients there, so the recipe is approximate and you'll probably have to play with it or wait for me to have another occasion to make chocolate cake and try that recipe again (and this time measure).


To achieve the pumpkin shape, we used a bundt cake pan and, because we only had one pan, baked the two parts of the cake one after the other. If I were to do this again, I probably wouldn't want to do it two batches, but instead make one larger (taller) cake that was less round, but probably equally pumpkin-shaped. For the cocoa, we used Dagoba unsweetened cocoa powder, but any unsweetened dark cocoa will do.


Chocolate Pumpkin Cake

3 cups all-purpose flour
6 Tablespoons unsweetened organic cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 cups granulated sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil (we used olive oil)
1/2 cup soft avocado, well mashed, about 1 medium avocado
2 cups water
2 Tablespoons white vinegar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Buttercream frosting (see note about this above)
Chocolate wafer cookies

Sift together all of the dry ingredients except the sugar.  Set that aside too. 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease and flour two 8 or 9-inch bundt pans.  Set aside. 

Mix all the wet ingredients together in a bowl, including the super mashed avocado. 

Add sugar into the wet mix and stir. 

Mix the wet with the dry all at once, and beat with a whisk (by hand) until smooth. 

Pour batter into a greased cake tins. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. 

Let cakes cool in pan for 15 minutes, then turn out onto cooling racks to cool completely before frosting.

Cake with Chocolate Yogurtcream Frosting

Chocolate Yogurtcream Frosting

(Strange, but it works! Remember, these proportions are approximate--but if I make it again (when I make it again) I will post updates about quantities.)

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

1 Tablespoon unsalted butter

1/4 cup Dagoba chocolate powder

1 Tablespoon plain, nonfat yogurt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cream together the sugar, butter, and cocoa powder . Add the yogurt and vanilla and mix until creamy. If it's too thick, add a touch more yogurt. If it's too thin, add more confectioners sugar.

To assemble the cake:

Once both cakes have cooled, you'll want to have them both with bundt-cake top (the part that was nearer to the rack as it baked) down on the cooling rack. Spread the chocolate yogurtcream frosting on one of the cakes (you probably won't use it all, but maybe it's really thick and you really like chocoalte). Flip the other cake on top, making sure the bundt-cake edges align.

Aim for something more or less like this

Carefully spread on the (orange) buttercream frosting. 

E Spreading frosting

It's best if this is thicker than the pictures show so you can smooth it into the contoured shape of the cakes. 

Our frosting is a bit runny, but so tasty (and super sweet!)

Once you've frosted the cake, carefully insert the chocolate wafer cookies (if you can get a green wafer, more power to you) to create a stem-effect.

Our first attempt at pumpkin shaped cake is complete!

Pumpkin-Chipotle Soup

So, I was biking along on a Saturday morning and what did I spy in the ditch? A runaway pumpkin! What more could I want out of life. I'm sure it escaped from a truck on the way to the farmers market. It was a lovely little pie pumpkin that suffered a hairline fracture when it fell. I rescued it...only to take it home, scoop out its guts, and slip it into the oven (lightly coated with oil, face down) for about an hour, until the flesh became tender.

Then I scooped out the meet and stuck it in a storage container. It was only then that I asked myself: okay, now what?

So, I made pumpkin butter (see my Autumn Harvest Butter). Only there was still pumpkin left.

Then I made this soup. The smoky chipotles compliment the sweet molasses and the lentils help thicken the soup and add a bit of protein. You can skip the cayenne if you want to make it a little less spicy, but I love having it in there. There isn't a lot of bite to the soup as its currently written (but note: I have a high spice tolerance), but if it's too much, you can smooth it out and tone it down with a dollop of yogurt (or sour cream) on top.

I serve this with fresh, whole grain bread usually, but if bread isn't your thing, then you could easily couple it with a side of a sauteed green or roasted Brussels sprouts.

Pie pumpkins differ from other types of pumpkins in that the flesh is a little sweeter and they tend to be less fibrous. But, if you've got another pumpkin handy, just use that. It should work out about the same--and don't get rid of those seeds. You can roast them with salt and/or spices, or you can candy them! Consider serving a sprinkling of pumpkin seeds on top of this thick soup.

Pumpkin-Chipotle Soup

1 teaspoon olive oil
¼ medium onion, chopped
1 rib celery, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
2 teaspoons ginger, minced
3 tablespoons split red lentils
15 ounces 100% pure pumpkin or fresh, roasted pumpkin
4 cups water
1 tablespoon (or to taste) chipotle pepper in adobo, minced
1 tablespoon molasses
¼ teaspoon (or to taste) cayenne pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Salt and fresh ground black pepper
Yogurt or sour cream (optional, garnish)

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, sauté onion and celery in the oil until onion begins to turn golden. Add garlic and ginger, sauté for 1 minute. Add red lentils and sauté 30 seconds. Add in the pumpkin, water, chipotle, molasses, and cayenne. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Use an immersion blender to puree the soup mixture, then stir in the cinnamon and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to heat once more. Serve hot with a dollop of yogurt or sour cream, if desired.

Autumn Harvest Butter

This simple recipe combines some of the best flavors of fall: pumpkin and apple. The recipe I originally made used freshly baked, mashed pie pumpkin, but you can also use the 100% pure pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling!). The jar on the right is the pumpkin butter; the two smaller jars are spicy pineapple core relish.

The best part about this recipe is how fast and simple it is to make. How long you'll need to cook it will depend on whether your applesauce is very thick and how thick you like your pumpkin butter. I used homemade applesauce made from Macintosh apples the first time, but the second time, I just used store bought unsweetend applesauce.

Enjoy!

Autumn Harvest Butter

15 ounces 100% pure pumpkin puree
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 tablespoons brown sugar (to taste)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
Pinch cardamom
1 tablespoon lime juice

Combine all ingredients together in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a simmer, stirring frequently, and allow to cook for 10-15 minutes, or until mixture is sufficiently thick (this will depend on your personal preference).