Pumpkin Puree

The pumpkin water after the baking tasted a whole lot like this Chinese papaya dessert soup I was once forced to try (I say forced only because I hate papaya). I decided to taste the water since dumping it out seemed rather wasteful, and the unintentional pumpkin variety actually tastes pretty decent. :O

I think this could more accurately be called just…”cooked pumpkin,” because I didn’t mash it as well as I could have (or blend it, for that matter). Some of my Tupperwares of pumpkin are more mashed than others.

This process took 3 hours only (cooking time; the scraping didn’t take as long, but was slightly tedious since the pumpkin was too hot to hold onto) because I could only fit a certain amount of pumpkin pieces into the oven at once. :O After it’s cooked, it’s definitely a whole ton easier to remove from the pumpkin from its shell.

Pumpkin Puree

Ingredients:
-1 whole pumpkin

Instructions:
1) Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Cut pumpkin in half from stem to base. Remove seeds and pulp. Cut into smaller pieces and place in oven-safe pan. Cover with foil.
2) Bake in oven for about an hour or until tender. The shell halves will have darkened.
3) Scrape pumpkin meat from shell halves and puree in a blender (or mash with a fork). Strain to remove any remaining stringy pieces. Store in the freezer in freezer-safe bags.