As you know, last week the girls and I went to a pumpkin patch with our story club. It was a blast and we brought four pumpkins home with us. When I lived in WA with my husband, we tried this experiment, but I neglected to record the most important part. So, I tried it again with these four pumpkins. The experiment goes like this: I pick several very different types of pumpkins, cook them, puree them, and cook with them. I record info along the way and at the end, discover which kind of pumpkin is best for which kind of food. This means a lot of cooking in small batches, but I'm having fun so far! Here is the photo evidence and data I have recorded so far:
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| In the background you can see the fourth pumpkin. In the foreground you can see a dolly head. |
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| Cinderella, Red Warty Hubbard, and Muscat de Provence. |
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| The green and orange one is one we tried in WA- Muscat de Provence. I kept calling it "The French One." |
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| This is the Cheese pumpkin because it looks like a wheel of cheese before it is cut up. |
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| The process was messy. |
I started with the Cheese pumpkin. I kept calling it the "Tan" pumpkin or "the one the color of butternut squash." It has smooth skin and was rather short like the Muscat. It wasn't too hard to cut- the skin was rather thin. The flesh smelled super sweet- almost like watermelon. The seeds were small and had dark edges, almost like someone traced them and cut out around the trace. The flesh was dark and the guts were very stringy (see picture below). It was almost like scraping out spaghetti squash. It was hard to tell where the center ended and the flesh began. Cook time for the pieces shown was 1 hour. You can see the standing water that rose from the baking process. The flesh was easy to scoop away from the skin and the skin was so thin that I often scraped some off with the flesh. But I think I got all of it off in the end. The flesh was dark, sweet, and pureed very easily. The pumpkin yielded 16 cups of puree. I baked bread with them this time. The batter tasted the sweetest and the bread was my favorite of the four, but the bread smelled the most sour after baking!
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| Stringy center of the Cheese pumpkin. |
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| Standing water on baked pieces. |
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| The pumpkin sweated a lot. |
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| The skin was thin as paper. |
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| Look at all the water in the bottom of that pot! |
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| This was after I used a baster to remove most of the water! |
The second pumpkin I cooked was the knobbly looking one- the Red Warty Hubbard. Fitting name. This one was very hard to cut into. Next time I'll use a hatchet or ax. The middle was spongy and the seeds were very white and fat. It has a very light scent, thick flesh, and cooked a lot dryer than the others. I baked it for 70 minutes. When I pureed it, all the water came out and made for a thinner puree. The flavor was just OK. It yielded 18 cups. The bread smelled less sweet than the Cinderella pumpkin bread.
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| More empty space in the middle than the Cheese pumpkin. |
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| Very white, fat seeds. |
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| Skin was thicker than the Cheese pumpkin. Flesh cooked drier. |
The third pumpkin I tried was the Muscat de Provence. It was squashed in the center and formed a very curved chunk. The stem was indented. The center was very similar to the Hubbard, spongy with hollow parts. The seeds were large but there were not as many as the others. Again, hard to tell when the core ended and the flesh began. Not hard to cut, not as much flesh as the Cheese, not very much scent but smelled sour when you got close. Baked 1 hour. Smooth and dark puree. Yielded 11 cups. Tasted pretty good by itself. The batter had the best taste of them all. But the bread tasted almost exactly the same as the Cinderella pumpkin!
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| Large seeds. |
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| It has these strange "dry" stringy bits. I just pulled them out with my fingers. |
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| The seeds popped out like candy from a wrapper. Also, note my Candy Corn Jamberry nail wraps! |
The last pumpkin was the Cinderella pumpkin. It was super easy to cut, had lots of hollowness. It was lighter than the others even though it was the largest. The smell was not unpleasant and was stronger than the others, but not very sweet. The center was spongy. Cooking time was 1 hour. Yield was 13 cups. It was a little harder to puree, but that may have been because I put it in the fridge over night. I squished it with my hands first, which helped. The puree was light and runny. The bread tasted exactly like the Muscat but smelled the sweetest.
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| Center: spongy and lots of it. |
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| Large seeds that looked exactly like the Muscat. |
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| Comparison. The Cheese chunk was already cooked. |
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| Four seeds (left to right): Cheese, Red Warty Hubbard, Muscat de Provence, and Cinderella. |
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| I have a ton of seeds to toast! |
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| I was baking for a long, long time! I began cutting the first pumpkin at 11am and stopped baking at 12:15am the next day!! |
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| Purees and batter (left to right): Muscat de Provence, Cinderella, Red Warty Hubbard, and Cheese. |
The recipe I chose to use was called Golden Pumpkin-Walnut Loaf. I got it from Myrecipes.com. I did not use the golden raisins (I was out and has very few regular raisins left) or the walnuts (I would be serving it to some who were allergic to nuts). The unique thing about this recipe was that it did not call for cinnamon or nutmeg! Instead it has cardamom and mace! I used cardamom and ginger from Penzy's Spice (BEST GROUND GINGER ANYWHERE!!!) and mace from McCormick.
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| Note the different colors and consistencies of the purees! Left to Right: Cheese, Hubbard, Cinderella, Muscat. |
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| This is after I scooped a cup out of each container. You can see the water in 2 of them. |
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| The batters were different shades like the purees. |
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| Finished product (from left to right): Cheese, Red Warty Hubbard, Cinderella, Muscat de Provence. |
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| The Muscat was in a glass dish and rose better. They were in the oven just like this. |
All four breads came out rather nice in consistency. The dough was made with white flour, wheat flour, and corn meal. The Cinderella was just a little spongier than the others. I served them to my family and three guests. My husband had a horrible allergy issue and could not taste or smell any difference. My daughters are 3 and 1, so they had no opinion other than that it was good. The guests chose either the Muscat (although I thought it tasted exactly like the Cinderella) or the Cheese. The Cheese was my favorite.
Next time I'll make something else. I plan to do smoothies, at least one kind of soup, and pie. I'll also bake up the seeds. I hope to record all the info, so expect further installments. And feel free to stop by for some bread!
