Happy OCTOBER everyone!
As much as I love the warm summer temps, there is a certain excitement that comes along with fall that involves getting cozy, watching football, burning creamy, spicy scented candles, and eating or drinking everything pumpkin flavored you can get your hands on! To celebrate the kickoff of autumn, I wanted to share a recipe evocotive of the season - everyone's favorite spreadable treat: pumpkin butter!
This recipe is going to be a little unique for vorace. I'll start by saying that I've recently discovered (thanks to a very helpful integrative doctor) that I have some health issues that need some attention. No need to get into the nitty gritty, but I wanted to share that bit of info as a way of prefacing the following recipe, as well as recipes I'll be posting in the near future. One of the holistic approach's treatment techniques focuses on lifestyle changes - one of which being diet. This treatment is based on the idea that what you eat has an effect on how you feel, how your body functions, and how healthy you are overall. This is definitely in line with my thinking, as I have done other research on my own and came to this same conclusion, so I was more than willing to take the advice of my doctor and embark on a new adventure of clean eating.
Clean eating means a lot of different things to various groups of people. The meaning behind the way I use the term is specific to myself and my health needs and is just a convenient way to shorthand my diet. To clarify, along with trying my hardest to maintain a whole-foods, plant-based diet (with the occasional addition of cheese & seafood), I have cut out almost all sugar & carbs - especially simple carbs. Sugars & carbs sneak their way into my diet in the form of low-glycemic fruits (strawberries! melon!) & complex carbs. So far that has been OK. But no sugar means no white sugar/honey/agave/syrup, and most importantly: no booze. Major sad face.
Not eating sugar is HARD. There is sugar in everything! Even stuff that doesn't really need it. Take a look at any label in your local grocery store. I did this on a recent trip to my fav Trader Joe's. It was depressing how little I could take home. One funny thing did happen though: I came across the obligatory PUMPKIN! display - pumpkin pancake mix! pumpkin cookies! pumpkin macaroons! pumpkin ice cream! pumpkin butter! Pumpkin butter you say? I picked up the jar and read the ingredients list and saw that it contained honey, and immediately thought, "honey! I can have that in moderation as like a treat every now and then! At least it's not the white sugar devil!" I bought it, took it home, and promptly enjoyed a smathering of it on my new fav go-to snack, brown rice cakes. A few days later I took another gander at the ingredients label and sure enough, sugar was listed. In my desperation to legitimately be able to treat myself to ONE pumpkin based seasonal cheat, I went selectively blind to the word "sugar," and tricked myself into thinking TJ's PB was kosher. And it wasn't.
I thought to myself, there has got to be a way I can make myself a version of pumpkin butter that I can have. I referred back to a pumpkin "ice cream" clean eating recipe I had found on Pinterest that I had tailored to my dietary restrictions. That recipe called for maple syrup so I skipped that and used maple extract. To sweeten it, I used my new best friend, Stevia. I figured I could use this same idea to create my own clean pumpkin butter. In the hayday of sugar ignorance bliss, I had been enjoying the TJ's pumpkin butter atop a healthy portion of creamy cashew butter, spread on the rice cakes. It.was.amazeballs. I decided to use the cashew butter as the base for my clean pumpkin butter and incorporate the ingredients from that "ice cream" to make it pumpkin-y, more like traditional pumpkin butter. And get a nice little protein boost to boot!
Before we get started, I have to say that I named this recipe after my favorite nickname for my puppy, Milli. Last year around this time I started referring to her as "pumpkin face," which quickly turned into "punkinface." I say this about a million times a day, so it made sense to name this recipe after her. Why not?
OK let's get cookin'!
Punkin Butter
Servings: One 16 oz jar
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: n/a
Ingredients:
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
2 1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice mix
3 packets of Stevia
1/8 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon maple extract
1 cup cashew butter (creamy, not chunky)
Start by placing the pumpkin puree in a bowl & mixing it so that the water (juice?) that has separated combines with the pumpkin.
Add the pumpkin pie spices and Stevia to the pumpkin and stir so that the spices are completely incorporated into the puree.
Next, drizzle in the extracts...
...and stir to combine.
Spoon the cashew butter into a food processor.
You may have to do this several times, scraping the sides down with a spatula in between.
When the pumpkin & cashew butter are fully mixed, use the spatula or a spoon to scoop the punkin butter back into your empty cashew jar or a food storage container with a tight fitting lid. You'll want to store this in the fridge.
[YUM!]
There are so many things you can eat this with! I spread it on brown rice cakes:
I must say though, the brown rice cakes are pretty scrumptious with this punkin butter spread on them. Give it a try!
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