Tag Archives: pumpkin

Pumpkin Spice Cinnamon Rolls

Even though the temperature isn’t really saying “fall is here” in our area the garden certainly is. We’ve been harvesting pumpkins, winter squash, and popcorn and sowing fall successions of beets, lettuce, and cabbage. With this and my love of all things autumn in mind I decided it’s time to bring out the fall recipes.

These cinnamon buns are a delicious way to start enjoying the autumn harvest without breaking out the pumpkin pie. They’re delicious and fairly easy to make.

Ingredients

Dough

  • 2 1/2-3 C all purpose flour
  • 2 TBS sugar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp ginger
  • 1/4 tsp allspice
  • 1/4 tsp nutmeg
  • 2 1/2 tsp yeast
  • 1/2 C water
  • 1/4 C milk
  • 3 TBS vegetable oil or butter
  • 1 TBS molasses
  • 1/4 C pumpkin puree

Filling

  • 3 TBS butter
  • 1 C pumpkin puree
  • 4-5 tsp cinnamon
  • 2 tsp ginger
  • 1 tsp nutmeg
  • 1 tsp allspice
  • 1/4-1/2 C brown sugar

Icing

  • 1 C powdered sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 2-3 TBS milk

Never made your own pumpkin puree? Check out this post.

Directions

Raised rolls ready for the oven.

Preparing the dough.

To begin combine the milk, oil or butter, molasses, puree into a microwaveable bowl or small saucepan. Heat these ingredients until they’re quite warm but not hot.

In a separate bowl combine the sugar, spices, salt, and yeast. Once the liquid ingredients are warm pour them into the bowl as well. Stir until well mixed and then begin adding the flour a little bit at a time. As the dough gets hard to mix you can turn it out onto a well floured surface and knead it with your hands.

You’ll know you’ve added enough flour when the dough forms a nice ball and is tacky but not sticky. Now allow the dough to rest for about 5 minutes.

Next roll the dough into a rectangle. I generally roll the dough between 1/4-1/2 inch thick though you can change this to suit your preference.

Dough with butter, pumpkin, puree, and spices. Still needs sugar.

Filling

Now you can spread the filling. First soften or melt the butter and mix it with the pumpkin puree and spread this in a thin layer on the dough. Then sprinkle the spices (alternatively you can use a pre-made pumpkin spice mix) evenly over the dough. Do the same with the brown sugar. I rarely measure the spices or sugar and just go by eye.

Roll the dough into a long tube and slice it into 8-12 pieces and place them into a greased, 9×13 inch baking pan. Place the pan somewhere warm and let them raise for 2-3 hours until they have doubled in size.

Bake at 350°F for about 25 minutes until they’re golden brown.

Icing

To make icing combine the powdered sugar and vanilla and stir in the milk a tablespoon at a time until it reaches your desired thickness. Icing should be added after the cinnamon rolls cool.

DIY Pumpkin Puree & Pumpkin Spice Waffles

Connecticut Field Pumpkin

Whoever decided that pumpkin spice food is just for autumn got it wrong. Now is when I scrambling to pack all the winter squash and pumpkins we put up this summer into our meals. Before long it will be spring and as much as I love the stuff I don’t want the house to still be overflowing with winter squash. Come spring I’ll be ready for greens, snap peas, and rhubarb! So for now it’s pumpkin spice, tasy, warm, filling and sweet.

DIY Pumpkin Puree

***for those who are ready for the waffle recipe keep scrolling****

Any local foodie will tell you pumpkin puree doesn’t come in a can! It’s actually super easy to make and nearly any winter squash or pumpkin will do. If you’ve got a Waltham Butternut or Table Queen on hand there’s no need to go search the farmers market for a pie pumpkin.

Split your squash or pumpkin in half and scoop out all the seeds. Place the pumpkin opening down in a shallow baking pan with about 1 inch of water. This will keep it from drying out.

Bake at 350°F for 30 minutes to 2 hours or until tender depending on the size of your pumpkin.

*Optional: clean the seeds and bake in a single layer on a cookie sheet with a little vegetable oil and salt while your pumpkin is baking. Bake until golden brown. Alternatively save them for next year!

On to the good stuff.

Pumpkin Spice Waffles

These waffles are a great breakfast or treat on a cold winter days and they’re an awesome way to cook with local, healthy ingredients. I bet you can get all the veggie haters in your life to eat some winter squash hidden in these little gems.

Another great thing about these waffles is that the squash takes the place of the egg in the recipe so they’re great for people with allergies or those who are vegan. I promise you’ll love them even if you’re not!

These waffles are that perfect mixture of crispy on the outside and soft and fluffy on the inside.

Here’s what you’ll need:

  • 1 cup of flour (all purpose or whole wheat)
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/8 tsp nutmeg
  • 1 TBS sugar
  • 1/2 cup of pumpkin puree
  • 6 TBS vegetable oil
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 cup milk (for dairy free replace with nut milk or water)

Option toppings:

  • maple syrup, butter, molasses, or powdered sugar

First combine all dry ingredients in a mixing bowl then add the pumpkin or squash puree, vanilla extract, and vegetable oil. Next, slowly stir in the milk. If you’re puree was watery you may need less of the milk. The batter should be easy to pour but not thin.

While you’re mixing up your batter you can pre-heat your waffle iron. A hot waffle iron makes better waffles that stick less.

Cook your waffle using the normal directions for your waffle iron and enjoy! Then promise your family you’ll make a double batch next time when they keep coming back for more.

Pin it for later.

Thinking like a plant

Books-Vegetable gardening in the Southeast-smallGarden Primer bookBarbara Damrosch states, early in her 633-page Garden Primer book, that “Good gardening is very simple, really.  You just have to learn to think like a plant.”

One of the challenges of learning to think like a plant is that not all plants think alike.

When you’re wondering how best to take care of a particular crop, the first question you’ll ask yourself might be “Where can I find good instructions?”  You might, for example, start by looking at the cultural notes in our catalog, or by looking in the “Edibles A to Z” section of Ira Wallace’s book Vegetable Gardening in the Southeast, or Barbara’s Garden Primer.

Another question to ask yourself is, “What do I know about the needs and habits of this plant’s relatives?”  Plants tend to be similar to their relatives in terms of the conditions they need for germination or fruit set, the relationships they form with soil microbes, the strategies they use to spread their seed, and many other factors.

For example, if you know that luffas are related to pumpkins and cucumbers, you can guess that growing luffas will be more similar to growing pumpkins or cucumbers than to growing tomatoes.

photos mid fall 2011 177 luffa stages
Left to right, the progression of luffas from flower bud to mature fruit: buds, flower, baby fruit with spent petals still attached, edible young fruits, intermediate-maturity fruits, and mature fruits for retting and use as sponges.

Luffas (also called loofahs), like most crops in the squash (cucurbit) family:

  • prefer dryer soil than most other plants, particularly while seeds are germinating
  • have delicate root systems, but can be transplanted with care
  • can sprawl or climb
  • use tendrils to cling to surrounding plants or structures
  • have flowers that are very attractive to bees
  • have separate male flowers and female flowers on androgynous plants
  • are easily killed by frost

If I was sending a soil test to a lab and wanted a recommendation on whether to amend the soil before planting luffas, I’d check the box of another crop in their family (assuming luffas aren’t on the list).  If I was worried that an insect might be attacking my luffa crop, I’d run through a mental list of the insects that I’ve known to attack other crops in its family. If I wanted to make a guess at which nutrients are abundant in luffas (when picked small for eating), I’d start by looking up which nutrients are abundant in other cucurbits that are also harvested before the seeds mature, like cucumbers or summer squash.  If I wanted to  harvest pure, market-worthy seeds from one variety of luffa, I’d plant it at least 1/2 mile from any other varieties of the same species of luffa, based on the similar isolation distances recommended for harvesting reliably pure seeds of other cucurbits.

However, any plant will have some significant differences from its relatives.  For example, most cucurbits set their seeds in a wet environment, but luffas set their seed in a dry environment.  Thus the techniques we use to clean luffa seeds are very different from those we use for most seeds in the cucurbit family.

It might be tempting to focus your gardening efforts on one family, grow lots of its members, and really learn how they think.  But diversity of plant families in your garden is one aspect of agrobiodiversity, and will help ensure that the bugs or diseases that like one of your crops won’t like too many of your crops.  It’s also important to rotate your crops, and like many farmers and gardeners, we organize our crop rotation according to plant family.

For an easy way to learn which plants are in which families, take a look at our illustrated list of the predominant plant families in American gardens.

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