Continuing the pumpkin theme... pumpkin ice cream

Pumpkin pie ice cream

Ingredients:

1-1/2 cups whole milk
1 cup packed light or dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons molasses or dark corn syrup
1-3/4 cups pumpkin purée (solid pack pumpkin)
1-1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
2-1/2 cups heavy cream
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup crumbled ginger snaps, vanilla butter cookies, or graham crackers


Procedure:
1) In a medium mixing bowl, use a hand mixer on low speed to combine the milk, brown sugar, and molasses until the sugar is dissolved, about 1 to 2 minutes. Stir in the pumpkin purée, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg.


2) Add heavy cream and vanilla. Turn the machine on; pour the mixture into freezer bowl, and let mix until thickened, about 20 to 25 minutes. Add the crumbled cookies during the last 5 minutes of mixing. The ice cream will have a soft, creamy texture. If a firmer consistency is desired, transfer the ice cream to an airtight container and place in freezer for about 2 hours.


3) Remove from freezer about 15 minutes before serving.

Servings:


Makes about fourteen 1/2-cup servings


Nutritional Information Per Serving:


Calories 310 (52% from fat) • carb. 35g • pro. 3g • fat 18g • sat. fat 11g • chol. 62mg • sod. 134mg • calc. 100mg • fiber 1g

     Okay, I had to put this one in there because I just made it and I got a chance to use two new wedding present gifts; an ice cream maker and a hand blender.  My ice cream maker is not working right now because of a missing motor so I decided to put one on my wedding registry.  Thanks to the generosity of Elizabeth Janz, I now have a new Cuisinart ice cream maker!  It got really great reviews and is really easy to use.  But the best thing of all?  There is no ice and rock salt to deal with!  That is always the trouble with making ice cream; whenever you feel like it, you have to go to the store and buy the ice and rock salt.  And then there is all that leftover ice to use!  This one just has a "freezer bowl" that you just stick in the freezer and let it freeze.  You know it is done when the liquid inside is frozen solid (i.e., stops sloshing around).  How cool is that?  I decided to make pumpkin ice cream because of all the pumpkin-themed things I have around.
     There is one other awesome wedding item that I got to use; a hand mixer!  I have been wanting one of these for ages, as I absolutely hate whipping egg whites (or anything else, for that matter), by hand.  This one was given to Scott and myself thanks to the generosity of Jason and Leah Novak.  This is another Cuisinart (a 9 speed one) that is super easy to use.  I was so impatient to use it that I just put it together without reading the instructions.  Other than the fact that one of the mixers kept falling into my ice cream mix (because I didn't put it in properly), it was a breeze to use!  
     The ice cream itself was easy to put together and came out DELICIOUS!  Scott made some pumpkin waffles (from a waffle maker given to us from Thomas Durbin).  Topped with pumpkin ice cream, they were divine.  

Pumpkin pie ice cream picture taken about a year after the post.
With granola and graham crackers...

Wedded bliss and pumpkins

Well, you may have noticed that I have been gone for a good long while (since August, wow!).  What, you may ask, could possibly be a good enough reason to keep me away from my cooking blog for about two whole months?  Well, let me tell you...

I GOT MARRIED!!  Woo!!  That's right, I am now a married woman!  Between planning for the wedding and going on the honeymoon (a cruise to Hawaii, but more on that in later blogs), I haven't had to cook at all for a good couple of months or so.  My husband (!!) has wonderfully stepped in and cooked delicious foods at home when we have had to eat at home.  However, I did really miss cooking.  Even when I was on the cruise ship and eating delicious meals 24/7, I missed my kitchen and my home-cooked meals.  Especially now that I have all these new kitchen gadgets to play with from the wedding (are you surprised?).  So, I decided to finally have a cooking day yesterday.  And what better way to celebrate that than with....

PUMPKINS!

I bought a small little pumpkin at New Leaf's on friday.  When I bought it, the check out stand lady asked if I was going to carve it and I said, "Nope, I am going to eat it!"  I thought it might be fun to try making pumpkin soup and serve it in itself.  I have been craving spicy food lately, so I thought I would make curried pumpkin soup.  However, I just couldn't find any recipes at all for curried pumpkin soup served in itself (I am sure there is one out there somewhere).  So, I just made it up (with a little help from some other recipes I saw online).
     I remember from when I cooked a pumpkin last year that it was kind of a pain in the butt to peel and cook and that using canned pumpkin was just as great.  So I decided to use a combo of the both.  I cut off both ends of the pumpkin (so it would be flat), and then peeled it with a lovely new Cutco knife that I have from our wedding registry.  I then removed the seeds and cut it into slices.  I removed the guts on the slices and then cut into 1/2 to 1 inch pieces, which then got steamed for about 15 min or so.  And, voila, cooked pumpkin!
  I had Scott buy another pumpkin to serve the soup in.  Cut the top off, seed and gut it.  Rub the inside with butter, salt and cinnamon and bake with the top on in a 375 oven for about an hour until the pumpkin is nice and soft.

Katie's curried pumpkin soup served in itself

Ingredients:

pumpkin (from 1 can and 1 small pumpkin)
small yellow onion
coconut milk (1 can plus about 1/2 carton)
butter
salt
cinnamon/sugar spice grinder
pepper
fiery pepper grinder
hot sauce
nutmeg
curry powder
paprika
allspice
garlic salt

Procedure:

1) Prep the eating pumpkin and the serving pumpkin as noted above.
2) Cook the onion in the butter until soft  (I realized in retrospect I should have cooked mine longer as it was still quite crunchy)
3) Add the pumpkin and the coconut milk.
4) Spice it until it is hot/tasty enough to your liking.  I wish could give specific amounts, but I just kind of added in stuff until it tasted good.  It took me a good ten minutes to get it just right.
5) Use an immersion blender until it is nice and smooth.
6) Serve in the hot pumpkin from the oven

     I definitely recommend cooking this soup, however you want to make it.  It tasted like spicy delicious pumpkin pie.  Plus, serving it in a pumpkin is awesome!  I served it with a simple salad and pumpkin ale (of course!)and cooked some bread to serve with it as leftovers (alas, the bread was not ready in time for dinner).  Use the seeds to make fiery pumpkin seeds (see last year's Halloween post).  And, above all, enjoy!!



Curried pumpkin soup in pumpkin




What better to go with pumpkin soup than pumpkin ale?




Scott unveils the soup



That pumpkin kept the soup warm for hours...