Pumpkin butter- part 1

I was thinking about pumpkin butter this morning. Since I've still got 8 galeux d'eysines left and more on the way, I decided to tackle it. Of course, government recommendations on canning now say that you shouldn't home can pumpkin butter, for a variety of reasons but I've also seen plenty of people who are doing it successfully. So, I decided to give it a whirl. I thought I'd give a crock pot recipe a try.

First to select a pumpkin. Since the number of warts on these pumpkins indicate the ripeness (and sugar content), I thought I'd use the ripest, wartiest pumpkin we have. It also happened to be the biggest one we've got.

This bad boy weighed in at 26.8 pounds!

Sliced in half, it looks like hearts.

J16 scooped the pulp after it was baked- 19 cups.

The recipe I decided to use was easy to figure out proportions.

For each 1 1/2 cups of pumpkin puree

add:

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

3/8 tsp nutmeg

3/8 tsp ginger

1/4 tsp ground cloves

Put it all in a crockpot and cook on high for 4 hours or low for 8 hours or overnight.

12 cups of pumpkin puree and the fixins

Stirred up and set to go overnight

I'll can it tomorrow. But, I'll tell you, it is already TASTY!!!!! I can't wait to see how it turns out. I may add in some vanilla since I am a huge vanilla fan. So far, it tastes like pumpkin pie. Mmmmm... pumpkin pie in a jar.