pumpkin | the rebel kitchen

This recipe is delicious and very like the soup my Mum used to have waiting for us after school each day. It’s a great one to throw your leftover pumpkin from Halloween in to.

We had a massive Halloween party in my house last week & I was exited to use my leftover pumkin. However my pumpkin wasn’t the best so I didn’t have any leftovers, but you could definitely add yours in with a little extra stock for some seriously tasty soup!

Ingredients:

2 cloves garlic chopped

1 onion chopped

3 carrots chopped

1-2 sweet potato chopped

Leftover pumpkin if you have it

2 sticks celery chopped

1 can chopped tomatoes

1 litre veg or chicken stock

1. Get a big pot and heat a little oil. Drop in garlic and onion and let soften for a few minutes. Add carrots, sweet potato, pumpkin, celery and stock.

2. Add in chopped tomatoes and let cook for 30-40 minutes on a medium heat.

3. Season, blend with and electric hand blender (be careful to avoid hot splashes!)

4. Serve with brown bread and butter.

Delicious Moist Pumpkin and Pecan Muffins

Seeing pumpkins everywhere and seeing Halloween outfits in shop windows have gotten me in the festive mood! I decided to bake something festive this week and popped in to Fallon & Byrne for pumpkin purée I had in mind that I wanted to make moist pumpkin muffins and stumbled upon this recipe from Lily Higgins blog, you’re always guaranteed to find the best cake recipes on her blog! Apparently the recipe comes from the Primrose Bakery. These muffins are really moist and light, and the maple syrup icing and pecan nuts adds to that festive Halloween feel without having to go OTT on decorating your cakes so literally! Just to note these muffins feel much softer than buns do when they come out of the oven, don’t feel compelled to keep them baking longer as you’ll lose that lovely moistness. Once a knife comes out clean from the muffin, they’re done

These are easy to make and really yum, I was so pleased with them. I had to make two batches to please both my housemates, colleagues and friends but it was well worth it. They are actually one of my favourite bakes, I might buy a few more cans of pumpkin purée for my cupboard for later in the year!

Ingredients:

110g butter (room-temperature… unless your house is freezing like mine)

240g Soft Light Brown Sugar

2 large eggs

½ tsp vanilla extract (much better than vanilla essence)

100g pureed pumpkin

125g self-raising flour

120g plain/cream flour

½ tsp cinnamon

½ tsp ground ginger

125ml buttermilk

12 whole pecans

Maple Icing:

8tbsp icing sugar

2tbsp Maple Syrup (I used local Apple Syrup)

1-2 tbsp hot water

Cream together butter and sugar until pale and smooth using electric mixer. Add eggs one at a time and then vanilla.
Add pumpkin until just combined.
Mix flours, cinnamon and ginger together. Add a third of the flour mix to the wet mixture, beat together and then beat in half of butter milk. Keep doing this until all flours and buttermilk are mixed in.
Smooth mixture into muffin cases until 2/3 full. Put in an oven pre-heated to 160C for 25 mins.
Let cool for 10mins and then decorate with Maple Glaze Icing and Pecans.