10 21 2011

Baked Stuffed Pumpkin & Pumpkin Orange Muffins

Comments are closed Posted by Carrie Schneider-Miller MS RD

A talented coworker made a Baked Stuffed Pumpkin and Pumpkin Orange Muffins for a nutrition class that she teaches. She found the recipes on AllRecipes.com. We loved how it made our office smell and her students really loved the way it tasted. The baked stuffed pumpkin filled three small pumpkins. It can be served over pound cake, angel food cook or ice cream. Make sure to buy baking pie pumpkins or/sugar pumpkins, not carving pumpkins for these recipes.

She made a few adjustments to the baked stuffed pumpkin recipe:

Cooked pumpkin shell in the microwave 7 minutes to speed up the softening process.
Used pumpkin pie spice instead of ginger root.
Rubbed brown sugar and cinnamon on the inside of the pumpkin to add more flavor.
Baked it for 1 ½ hour and it wasn’t long enough. Next time she will dice the apples smaller pieces.
Try dried cranberries or regular raisins instead of golden raisins.

Baked Stuffed Pumpkin
6 servings

Ingredients:

1 medium sugar pumpkin
6 Granny Smith apples – peeled, cored and chopped
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 (16 ounce) can whole berry cranberry sauce
1 (20 ounce) can pineapple chunks, drained

3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/2 cup dark rum (optional)
2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger root
1 tablespoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Position rack in the center of the oven.
Cut out top of pumpkin and set aside. Scoop out seeds with a metal spoon.
In a large bowl, stir together the apples, walnuts, cranberry sauce, pineapple, brown sugar, raisins, and rum. Season with ginger, nutmeg, and cinnamon, and mix well. Spoon the mixture into the cleaned pumpkin, and replace the top.
Set pumpkin directly on a baking stone or thick baking sheet. Bake for 1 hour in the preheated oven, or until pumpkin begins to soften. Remove from heat, and stir, scraping the sides gently, so that some pieces of pumpkin fall into the apple mixture.

Pumpkin Orange Muffins

Ingredients:

1 package yellow cake mix
1 ¼ cups pumpkin
3 eggs
2/3 cup orange juice
shortening and flour for pans

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°
Prepare baking pans. Grease muffin tins or use paper muffin cups. For cake, grease and flour a 9 x 13 pan. For loaf bread, grease and flour two 9 x 5 inch pan.
Combine cake mix, pumpkin, orange juice and eggs in a large bowl. Beat on low speed 30 seconds until blended; beat at medium speed for 2 minutes.
Fill muffin tins 2/3 full (makes 24 muffins); or pour into prepared cake pan, or loaf pan.
Bake until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the middle.

Approximate baking times:
Muffins 15-20 minutes, Loaf Bread 40-45 minutes, Cake 30-35 minutes.