Aunt Noni’s fresh pumpkin is soooo much better tasting than that ol’ bright
orange-lookin’ store-bought stuff in a can. This recipe from my Aunt Noni comes out a
rich, brownish-orange color and cooks up beautifully. AND, this mixture can be frozen and
used all year round in all your pies, cakes, and breads and muffins that require
pumpkin!
PREP TIME
25 min
TOTAL TIME
45 min
INGREDIENTS
1 medium-sized or 4 small-sized sugar pumpkins (cut and inner seed-stringy pulp
scraped out)
¾ cup sugar
½ cup evaporated milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ teaspoon salt
4 eggs, beaten
½ teaspoon each of ground
cloves, ground cinnamon,
freshly ground nutmeg
3 tablespoons butter, melted
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Cut the fresh pumpkin into manageable slices (like a cantaloupe
slice), cut off the outer skin, and cut into 3-inch pieces. Put the
peeled pumpkin chunks into a pot of boiling water (like you would
boil potatoes) and boil until tender, about 20 minutes, until soft. You can also
steam the pumpkin, if you like, until soft.
2. Once the pumpkin is soft, drain it in a colander in your kitchen sink.
3. After it has been sitting in the colander about 10 minutes, VERY GENTLY press
the pumpkin down into the colander with a big spoon to get all the
extra water out.
4. After it’s drained, put the boiled (or steamed) pumpkin into a bowl and mash it like
you would mashed potatoes, and again, pour off any extra juice. And, there’s
your fresh pumpkin! SOOO much better than that ol’ canned stuff!
5. Measure out 2 cups of the freshly mashed pumpkin and place it in
a big mixing bowl. Then, mix and whisk in all the rest of the ingredients listed above,
until it’s blended. Keep doing this until you use up all of the pumpkin.
NOTE: Now, if you’re still in a hurry, just buy yourself a store-bought frozen deep-dish
pie crust already in the pan (or packaged frozen pie crust dough that you roll out and
place it in your pie pan) flute the edges, fork some pricks in the crust, fill the pie shell
with your beautiful FRESH pumpkin mixture and bake at 350ᵒ for 30-40 minutes (‘til it
doesn’t jiggle in the middle) and it turns that beautiful rich brown color. YUM!