Making Pumpkin Pancakes

While the hot and unusually dry months of July, August and September severely impacted our pumpkin crop, we were able to salvage some of the harvest and picked a number of Jack Be Little, New England Sugar Pie, and Jarrahdale pumpkins.  Here are a few of them in the corner of the kitchen.  You can see the curious-looking blue Jarrahdale pumpkin sticking out like a sore thumb!

Some of the harvest

We will eat every last one of them.  To process them, all you do is cut them in half and scoop out the seeds with a spoon.  We'll save the seeds for next year's crop.  Cut the pumpkins into quarters and put them in a baking pan with a half inch or so of water in the bottom, and bake them until the flesh is soft.  Scoop out the pumpkin flesh with a spoon, leaving only the hard 'skin' of the pumpkin.  You can put that in the compost pile.

Now here's the best part - eating the pumpkin!  We're going to make pumpkin pancakes.  Here's the recipe we'll use with minor changes:

Pumpkin Pancakes

2 Cups of Flour (we used 1 cup Spelt and 1 cup Kamut flour that we ground)

2 Tbs sugar 

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 cups milk

1 cup vanilla yogurt (we used some homemade kefir from our cows)

2 eggs

1/2 cup - 1 cup pureed pumpkin

4 tbs melted butter

This recipe came from a newsletter that I get from some friends of ours: Gotreaux Family Farms in Scott, Louisiana.  Check them out.  They are an amazing family!

Here are the ingredients all laid out.  Let's get going!

Look at the beautiful orange homegrown pumpkin!

Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder and cinnamon together in a container with a whisk until it is all combined.

Mixing the dry ingredients

In a separate container pour in the kefir, the pumpkin that we pureed in the food processor, and the eggs from our hens.

Here goes the pumpkin

Finally we pour the milk from Daisy and Rosie into the bowl of wet ingredients and add in the melted butter.  Stir this all together until it is mixed up.

Nice dark yolks in the bowl

Now it is time to combine all the ingredients, so pour together and mix.  

Now it all comes together

We almost forgot the vanilla!  Add it in and stir.

Last but not least

Tricia heated up the cast iron griddle and put a pat of butter on top.  When it is ready spoon on a perfect amount on the griddle. 

First pumpkin pancake on the griddle 

When that one is ready put another on.  There are lots of hungry people gathering in the kitchen by this point and there is no time to waste.  Keep the assembly line going.

Golden brown pumpkin pancakes!  Can you smell them?

That is a fine looking pumpkin pancake!

We make a stack of them on a plate with a few pats of butter melting on top.  Then it is time to pour some Steen's Pure Cane Syrup on top of that.

Ready to Eat

They were delicious.  You could taste the pumpkin flavor, but it wasn't over-powering.  Forget Wheaties.  This is the breakfast of champions.  Savor the fall flavor of pumpkin pancakes accompanied by a cup of Community Dark Roast Coffee.  Even if it is still warm and muggy outside, we can pretend it is fall, can't we?

Harvesting a few Pumpkins

On September 23rd Autumn officially began.  Autumn is a nice time of year around here.  The weather (at long last) cools off, the grass stops growing as quickly and thus doesn't require mowing as often, and finally, you begin to see every product advertised from cappuccino to muffins to M&Ms having a pumpkin spice flavor. There are not many fragrances that are better than a Pumpkin pie baking in the oven!

This year we planted a 45 foot row of pumpkins, with three different varieties.  I haven't talked about them since THIS POST FROM EARLY JULY, so it is time for an update.  On cool mornings you can walk out by the pumpkin patch and see their beautiful flowers opening open wide, encouraging honeybees to come pollinate. Here is a bee that is obliging...

Busy Bee on the Pumpkin Flower

The bee does its job and then, using the flower petal as a runway, launches off to search for another flower.  It doesn't take long to find the next one, mere inches away!

Cleared for take-off

Here is a New England Sugar Pie Pumpkin still growing.  It is not a large pumpkin, only weighing 3 pounds or so at maturity, but they are supposed to be excellent for pie making, as the name suggests, and loaded with seeds.  We like to roast the seeds in the oven and eat.  I'm sure I'll save some seeds for next year's pumpkin planting venture as well.

New England Sugar Pie

Here is a Jack-be-little Pumpkin.  They are the very first of the pumpkins to ripen. Even though the pumpkins are really small, the vines are prolific and will cover up a lot of landscape!  These little pumpkins are great for fall decorations, but they are good eating, too.  

Another great benefit of pumpkins that I might mention are the vines.  I planted our pumpkin patch in the yard.  This was very strategic thinking on my part as I knew that the vines would crawl all over the place, reducing the amount of mowing I would need to do throughout July - October!  That's using the old noggin.

Jack Be Little

Below is a Jarrahdale Pumpkin.  Of the three varieties I planted, this one is maturing the slowest for me.  It has an odd, flat shape, but the neatest thing about it is that it will be a blue-gray color. The ones growing now still have a light green color at the moment.  They are supposed to grow to 6 - 10 pounds, although I must say that I don't think my New England Sugar Pie Pumpkins or my Jarrahdale Pumpkins will reach the size they are supposed to get.  I attribute that to an extremely dry summer. Even though I watered them daily after the drought became severe, I feel that tap water is near as good for plants as good old rainwater, and that likely stunted their growth a bit.

Jarrahdale

Here is a New England Sugar Pie Pumpkin that has turned a beautiful orange color. If the stem is still green and the pumpkin itself is still soft to the touch after putting my thumbnail against it, I allow it to continue growing.  I'll keep my eye on this one for a week or so.

New England Sugar Pie Pumpkin Ripening

The vines were looking pretty rough with the hot dry weather, but with the cooler temperatures, I'm actually seeing new growth and new flowers.  I'll allow them to continue growing as long as they like.  More pumpkins = more pumpkin pie and that is a positive development in my book for sure.

Future Pumpkins...

I harvested 2 New England Sugar Pie Pumpkins and 14 Jack Be Little pumpkins this afternoon, and I'll allow them to dry on the back patio for a couple of weeks.  I learned that it is best to allow a long stem to remain on the pumpkin, and that wiping the pumpkin down with a 10 % bleach solution kills organisms that causes the pumpkin to rot prematurely.  

The First Pumpkin Harvest of the Year.  Many more to come

We have lots more to be harvested, but I'm allowing them to continue ripening on the vine.  I don't want to pick them prematurely and have them rot before we have a chance to convert them into delicious homemade pies.  I can't wait to see the Jarrahdale (blue gray) Pumpkins in all their glory. I'll be sure to share a photo when we pick them.  It's not everyday that you see a blue pumpkin.