Stuffed Pumpkin and Spooky Halloween Dinner

The rainy day today was perfect cooking and baking weather. I wanted to share a recipe that one of the Garden of Eden Co-Op members submitted. We tried it tonight and it was delicious, fun, and the kids loved it. It was nice to try it out on the small crew tonight and I will definitely be making it for Thanksgiving since it was a success. It's pretty and tasty...perfect for the holidays. Pumpkin is one of my favorite foods. Dr. Steven Pratt is one of my hero's (he wrote SuperFoods RX and the books that followed) he named Pumpkin one of his 14 SuperFoods so I'll use any excuse to make it.

Pumpkin Stuffed With Everything GoodMakes
2 very generous servings

1 pumpkin, about 3 pounds

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1/4 pound stale bread, thinly sliced and cut into 1/2-inch chunks

1/4 pound cheese, such as Gruyere, Emmenthal, cheddar, or a combination, cut into 1/2-inch chunks

2-4 garlic cloves (to taste), split, germ removed, and coarsely chopped

4 strips bacon, cooked until crisp, drained, and chopped (I used pancetta)

About 1/4 cup snipped fresh chives or sliced scallions

1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme

About 1/3 cup heavy cream (I used half and half)

Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with a silicone baking mat or parchment, or find a Dutch oven with a diameter that's just a tiny bit larger than your pumpkin. If you bake the pumpkin in a casserole, it will keep its shape, but it might stick to the casserole, so you'll have to serve it from the pot - which is an appealingly homey way to serve it. If you bake it on a baking sheet, you can present it freestanding, but maneuvering a heavy stuffed pumpkin with a softened shell isn't so easy. However, since I love the way the unencumbered pumpkin looks in the center of the table, I've always taken my chances with the baked-on-a-sheet method, and so far, I've been lucky.

Using a very sturdy knife - and caution - cut a cap out of the top of the pumpkin (think Halloween jack-o'-lantern). It's easiest to work your knife around the top of the pumpkin at a 45-degree angle. You want to cut off enough of the top to make it easy for you to work inside the pumpkin. Clear away the seeds and strings from the cap and from inside the pumpkin. Season the inside of the pumpkin generously with salt and pepper, and put it on the baking sheet or in the pot. Toss the bread, cheese, garlic, bacon, and herbs together in a bowl. Season with pepper - you probably have enough salt from the bacon and cheese, but taste to be sure - and pack the mix into the pumpkin. The pumpkin should be well filled - you might have a little too much filling, or you might need to add to it. Stir the cream with the nutmeg and some salt and pepper and pour it into the pumpkin. Again, you might have too much or too little - you don't want the ingredients to swim in cream, but you do want them nicely moistened. (But it's hard to go wrong here.)

Put the cap in place and bake the pumpkin for about 2 hours - check after 90 minutes - or until everything inside the pumpkin is bubbling and the flesh of the pumpkin is tender enough to be pierced easily with the tip of a knife. Because the pumpkin will have exuded liquid, I like to remove the cap during the last 20 minutes or so, so that the liquid can bake away and the top of the stuffing can brown a little.

When the pumpkin is ready, carefully, very carefully - it's heavy, hot, and wobbly - bring it to the table or transfer it to a platter that you'll bring to the table.

Serving

You have choices: you can cut wedges of the pumpkin and filling; you can spoon out portions of the filling, making sure to get a generous amount of pumpkin into the spoonful; or you can dig into the pumpkin with a big spoon, pull the pumpkin meat into the filling, and then mix everything up. I'm a fan of the pull-and-mix option. Served in hearty portions followed by a salad, the pumpkin is a perfect cold-weather main course; served in generous spoonfuls or wedges, it's just right alongside the Thanksgiving turkey.

I also made these Pumpkin Spiced Cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. They are delicious.
Recipe from Every Day Food Magazine.

¾ cup (1 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

1 cup sugar

3 eggs

1 cup pumpkin puree

½ cup buttermilk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

¼ teaspoon ground clove

1 recipe Cream Cheese Frosting

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly coat 2 12-cup muffin pans with cooking spray.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
In a separate, medium size mixing bowl, combine the pumpkin puree with the buttermilk and vanilla extract and mix well. In another medium size mixing bowl combine the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda, nutmeg, and clove and mix well. In thirds, alternately add the flour mixture and the buttermilk mixture to the creamed butter, blending gently after each addition.
Using an ice cream scoop or a ¼ cup measure, divide the batter evenly among the 24 cupcake wells and bake until a toothpick inserted into the middle of each cupcake comes out clean, about 30 minutes. Cool the cakes on a wire rack in the pans for 15 minutes. Remove the cakes from the pans and continue to cool on the wire racks until completely cool.
Frost the cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting and serve.

Halloween's Spooky Dinner was a hit by the way, The menu was;
Mummy Meatloaf
Spiderweb Pizza
Severed Fingers
Blood Vein Soup
Blood berry Punch

Kai and I were having a howling good time preparing it and the dry ice in the punch was the best!!