No shortage of pumpkin here

Folks, there is a legitimate pumpkin shortage this year.  Blame it on the weather, blame it on poor crops.  Blame it on the powers that may be if it’ll make you feel better.  There is no going around it that the very sanctity of Thanksgivings in America could be threatened this year.

Is that a little extreme?  Yeah…ok…probably.

I think I let my fear of not being able to enjoy all things pumpkin this year lead to me yell into the phone “Get two cans!” while poor Matt was doing a quick grocery store run.  In my head I knew “Get two cans!” meant “Get two 15 ounce cans!”.  I guess our psychic married powers were on the fritz that day because I was greeted by two 30 ounce cans of pumpkin when I got home that night.

I saw this as a challenge.  How many recipes could I get out of 60 ounces of pumpkin?  Just typing that out I am amazed at how much pumpkin I have gone through in the past few weeks.  That is 3 3/4 pounds of pumpkin!

The original intended purpose of the pumpkin was to make some pumpkin bread for two potlucks my mom was going to.  I made two loaves of Martha’s pumpkin, sage, and browned-butter quick bread at first, but as the loaves were already assigned to events which I was not attending, I wasn’t able to taste them.  And I always hate when that happens.  But I wasn’t worried…I still had 46 ounces of pumkin left!  So I whipped up another loaf (this is really one of the simplest quick bread recipes) and was able to savor the sweet yet savory combination of the pumpkin and sage.  The browned-butter added another dimension to the bread that you wouldn’t necessarily expect from a quick bread.  Another win for Martha.

At that point I was down to 38 ounces of pumpkin.  My brother made a request for pumpkin whoopies pies, complete with a link the recipe and a snarky remark on my Facebook page about wanting a shout out.  But I probably wouldn’t have been attracted to make these on my own so I’m glad he requested them.  Thanks baby brother!

The cookie part of the pies was more like a spiced pumpkin cookie cake and the marshmallow cream filling, while alone was too buttery in my opinion, sandwiched in between two pumpkin cookie cakes lend the perfect amount of sweet.  These were some darn good whoopie pies.

Three loaves of pupmkin bread and 20 pumpkin whoppie pies.  I’m kind of tired just reading that.  But what to do with the remaining 23 ounces of pumkin?

The pumpkin whoopie pie recipe can be found here.

Pumpkin, Sage, and Browned-Butter Quick Bread

Adapted from the November 2009 issue of Martha Stewart

This recipe can make one 9 x 5 inch loaf or eight 2 1/2 x 4 inch loaves.

6 ounces unsalted butter

1/4 cup fresh sage, cut into thin strips

1 2/3 cups all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup solid-pack pumpkin (from one 15 ounce can)

1 cup packed light-brown sugar

2 large eggs

Preheat the oven to 350 degress and spray the loaf pan with non-stick spray.

Melt the butter over medium-high heat in a medium saucepan.  Add the stips of sage to the melted butter and cook until the butter has turned a golden brown, or 5 to 8 minutes.  Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

In one bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and salt.

In another bowl, whisk together the pumpkin, sugar, eggs and browned butter with sage.

Add the flour mixture to the liquid mixture and whisk until combined.  Pour the batter into the pan and bake for about one hour, until a tester instered into the center comes out clean.

Let cool in pan for about half and hour and then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.