Soooo, I came upon a pumpkin drink.
It all happened after roasting and pureeing a huge fairytale pumpkin…
(Fairytale pumpkins are the bestest for eating. You will be amazed at the beautiful flesh and flavor.)
I never really get sick of pumpkin treats.
Do you?
I have not had very many this season yet, so I am still in –
Lucky it’s pumpkin eating season happiness.
As you may know, when you puree a pumpkin you have to strain out the water before using the puree for baking.
After you oven roast and puree your pumpkin, you can scoop the puree into a cheesecloth bit by bit (I use a flour sack towel), and twist your puree bundle to let out the water.
Or, you can put your puree in a towel or cheesecloth, over a strainer, then over a bowl for a few hours.
I do both.
This time around, I decided to collect some of the roasted and pureed pumpkin water.
I decided to collect it half way through, so some was lost.
But I put the rest in a pitcher.
I thought it might taste good, if I heated it, and added some flavor to it.
Like a pumpkin drink of sorts.
Mister Lovee says it’s like a cider really.
Which in looking up the proper definition of cider, it could sorta be.
And punkins are technically fruit, right?
Although cider is more of mashed fruit, typically apples.
Not the water of the fruit.
So, who the heck knows, haha!
Anyhow, I decided to heat some up…
Then I put some sugar and spice in a bowl.
4 cups pumpkin water
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
a good pinch ginger
a good pinch ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt
You must do the salt, it enhances all the flavors.
Without it, the whole thing tastes like something is missing.
I popped the spices into the heating pumpkin water…
As it got hotter, I made sure to whisk things up really well.
Dissolve the spices and sugar thoroughly.
Once it comes to a boil, pour into a cup, and let cool a bit.
Then, sip away…
It tastes like pumpkin pie in a way.
First sip, your brain tries to understand what you are sipping.
Then it goes, oh ya, pumpkin.
Yumm.
I tested a few things too.
If you want to be extra rotten, you can put a tiny little tinge of real butter in the pot.
I know this is borderline ridiculous.
But, I wanted to see if it did anything.
Like, added more of a decadent dessert body.
It was yumm, but just as good without it, if not better.
I also tried a little chocolate, like, hot pumpkin chocolate.
It was okay.
But much better in the original fashion.
Although, I am not a huge lover of chocolate or the flavor, so, it’s hard for me to judge.
I really can’t tell you how lovely just the hot spiced pumpkin water was.
What should it be called?
Does anyone know?
Maybe it already has a proper name, and I am the only one that doesn’t know.
Haha!
I thought about all the things you can do with this sugar and spice pumpkin water.
Ice cubes?
Use it instead of plain water in oatmeal?
Use it instead of plain water with a proper package of ready made hot chocolate.
Truly, you could try it instead of water in lots of baking projects, me thinks.
As for me.
I think I am still celebrating Halloween.
Piano + Jacko
Yes yes, in fact.
I am.
I have decided that from this day forward, I will celebrate Halloween until Nov. 5th.
Maybe up until the 7th or 8th actually.
Because, the abrupt shift from October 31st to November1st is much too traumatic for this Halloween loving heart.
I mean, for the love of squash, it’s still tanning weather here.
I need a few more days after Pumpkin Holiday Halloween to hope for cool.
89′ F today.
It’s chilly late night.
But day, warmest warms.
So, how I ask, can I be shuffled past the spookiest day so quickly?
I need a buffer.
Or else, haha!
If I had a therapist, I am sure he/she would agree with me.
🙂
Don’t you?
Love, V
ps: When I make pumpkin soup, I don’t extract the water from the puree, and just use the puree plus some chicken stock. But if you are a vegetarian, you don’t need the chicken stock. You could use veggie stock. Or just straight pumpkin if you’d like. I do that too.
Oh Yum!!! What a great idea for a cold weather drink. Wonder what it would taste like with just a bit of rum or something like that added to it. I don’t know rum from bourbon…but I always hear people talking about Hot Toddies! Don’t they have some sort of alcohol in them?
Ohhhh…maybe you could use the liquid in homemade oatmeal cookies.
I don’t know why I’m sitting here dreaming about hot, luscious, high calorie beverages. It’s 96 degrees today and too hot to drink anything hot. But, I guess a gal can dream, can’t she?
xoxo
Kim
Gerushia’s New World
Oh I celebrate Hallowe’en right up to Remembrance Day on the 11th! This whole time frame is awash with spirits or the dearly departed and their memories. It’s only proper to give them 2 weeks out of the year dedicated solely to them! The magic of Halloween night doesn’t disappear just because the clock moves forward. 🙂
“For the love of squash”……you crack me up…..
The old graphics (on your Hershey’s cocoa can) are so much more homey …. it’s almost cocoa time ….. Utah has been warm also, but WINTER is c~o~m~i~n~g ….I leave all my Halloween up until Thanksgiving & just add more baby pumpkins, acorns, & rose petals…..
Your site is Cirque du Soleil for the soul ~
My daughters and I have been re-reading the Harry Potter books and they always have iced pumpkin juice at Hogwarts! Just a thought… 🙂
DJL
JUGO DE CALABAZA con leche might be more yummier.
Nix the chocolate although I’m a devout lover of it.
You could whirrrr in some frozen yogurt for a smoothie?
OH!
I need something from you. (sorry)
But I want to grow white punkins for next year…do you have any
spare seeds? Then I want to display them with roses like I saw somewhere.
Are you ready to get your turkey feathers on?
You know…our yard has turkey feathers floating around.
I neeeeed turkey feathers :)))
I will scrounge up white calabzas 🙂 Somewhere, haha!
Blog: http://www.aFancifulTwist.com
Website: http://www.VanessaValencia.com
In a message dated 11/5/2012 2:33:08 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time,
My mind is thinking about what you could use it for. I like the oatmeal idea.
Is it too thin to add to baked goods? How about just a splash in coffee or plain tea?
I saw your comments at Laura’s Rhinestone Armadillo blog.
You can thank me for the dead armadillo picture. I’m the Laura she’s talking about.
We’ve e-mailed a bit & I told her I’m a vegetarian & the tongue really freaked me out. Ha,ha.
Now I think she’s purposely out to give me nightmares! : )
Ooh I will definitely try out this recipe! I have been wanting to recreate pumpkin juice from Harry Potter and this looks like it just about fits the description! Sorry, my mind translates everything into Harry Potter….:)
I’ve been thinking about making a pumpkin soup! I had the most lovely pumpkin and sausage (i think) one last year and wanted to try making it myself. It was a tad too sweet, but I’ve never made a pumpkin soup before, so we’ll have to see how it turns out! Nice job on the drink!
Definitely Pumpkin Juice straight from Hogwarts! An invisible witch must have been whispering the recipe in your ear whilst you were making your pumpkin concoction.
Marvelous! I must try it!
Yes…from October 31st to November 1st there needs to be a ‘buffer zone’ of in between ‘no days’ of nothing but the ‘feeling’ of Halloween lingering in the air. It’s just too sudden for it to be over at the stroke of midnight between the
veil that hoovers as the clock strikes just before All Saints Day. In seconds, Halloween is gone! Over! Too fast! Boo! Whoo! Poof!
I try to be a little ‘witchy’ all year round. I like my stripped stockings and black cats, and toads, and pumpkins too.
=^..^= Miss Snow Queen
I bet you’re the original inventor of pumpkin water. At least in my book you are.
It’s cold here today and I was scraping the ice off my car this morning so a warming spicy pumpkin drink sounds divine.
I still have my Halloween decorations up. I’m going to gradually take them down and replace them with Christmas. That way the transition is a lot less painful. 🙂
I agree with Laura T. Pumpkin coffee or pumpkin tea sounds perfect.
It looks delicious!
Jess x
I got such a kick from reading this, cause I had thought about making soup on one of our left over grey pumpkins – so guess what’s roasting in the oven right now? If it turns out I might puree and strain some more, and bake my lovely pumpkin short bread 🙂
Well that does it, I’m going to have to try pumpkin water. 🙂 I haven’t cooked up any of my pumpkins yet. Maybe this weekend I’ll give one a try. See what I can do. I cooked a pumpkin one year, and used the flesh to make pumpkin pie. We didn’t like it. Too stringy. But – it was my fault as I didn’t puree it after it was cooked. Doh! So again I’ll try. 🙂
love & blessings
~*~
ps…I agree about needing more halloween time. i missed it altogether this year and it feels like it was never even here! I still have my deco up, but it will come down tomorrow or later today. 🙁
SOUP!
sounds like SOUP!
I firmly believe October and April should be 8 weeks long each.Here is a link to a Italian Pumpkin Porridge.Very peasant,rustic food but it may give you ideas.
http://mylittleitaliankitchen.wordpress.com/2012/11/02/zuf-hearty-pumpkin-porridge-from-friuli-north-east-of-italy/
For the love of squash!
V QUOTE: “Because, the abrupt shift from October 31st to November1st is much too traumatic for this Halloween loving heart.”
Guuuuuurrl – that’s exactly how I feel. I still have my Halloween stuff sitting on my dining room table. The past week I’ve scolded myself that I *WILL* put it away into storage, but yeahyeahyeah, I haven’t done it obviously, lol. This weekend I’ll put away the most outrageous things, but the folk-art and other cool stuff gets incorporated into the daily decor. Call me a “goth” or whatever, but that’s what I like. ‘;^)
I have a huge pumpkin that I was going to roast the seeds and now I have something else to make a treat with…love the idea of a cidery-pumpkin drink! Yum.
This looks utterly delish & delightful!!!
Dear friend,
I wanted to let you know we, right here, fared well with Hurricane Sandy (much better than we did with Hurricane Irene last August) and are so thankful & fortunate. The devastation is utterly, painfully heartbreaking. I’ve never seen anything like it and I hope I never see anything like this again in my lifetime. I’m still stunned, 10 days later. We all are, here in NJ (and parts of NY too).
Thank you for your kindness & understanding about my cancelling my Halloween Party post. I had hoped to do a belated post, but as of now, I don’t think that will come to be. Thank you and everyone for your prayers, well wishes & good thoughts too!
Love,
Jo
I love the pumpkin drink. There are many benefits of pumpkin in our health because it’s good for our eyesight and it improves our vision for any defect that may occur.
I have a punkin I need to roast & puree, but I’m super glad I waited to do it! Now I’ll have something to do with the water… I was trying to figure out what to do with it, as it seemed like surely I could do SOMETHING with it… and now I can! Yay! And thanks! ^-^
As for Halloween… it’s kind of like Halloween at my house most of the year. =P
Around the end of November we kind of start to bring out the Yule decorations, but there’s all sorts of Halloweeny things that stay up in our place all year long… we’re both displaced residents of Halloweentown, I’m convinced! =D
And I’m sure our collective therapists would indeed agree that a Halloween transition period is healthy… =D
XOXO
That is a wonderful idea! Still have some sugar pie pumpkins about to come off the vine, so I’ll have to try that. I have no idea whether it could truly be called cider or not – but I think when I try it, I will call it ‘pumpkin tea,’ at least in my mind…
Child at heart – names of things seem to matter to me…I hated oatmeal when I was growing up, but then when I became a grown-up (of sorts ;-), because it’s so good for you, I wanted to learn to like it…So I decided to tell myself I was eating ‘porridge,’ which is what I still call it in my mind, though I do say the ‘O’ word to others, so they know what I’m talking about… Anyway, renamed as porridge, suddenly oatmeal became very tasty. So I think I’ll call it pumpkin tea and perhaps my grandgirls will want to try it then too…Thanks for the recipe/idea!
^Came back to say – though I know names really Shouldn’t matter and truly don’t — ‘a rose by any other name still smells as sweet…,’ as the bard said. And pumpkin cider I’m certain would definitely taste (and sounds!) just as sweet! Only meant to comment on my own peculiar eccentricity, that when I hear water, I think it should only taste like water…silly, I know… 😉
That sounds absolutely fabulous, Vanessa! I love pumpkin anything, too. I just recently found pumpkin english muffins AND we had pumpkin pancakes for dinner tonight. Yep, we here LOVE breakfast for dinner!!!! 🙂 Thanks for sharing how you made the pumpkin drink!
Terri, I agree. Pumpkin water is just weird :)))) I totally
wanted to call in pumpkin tea, I am with you 😉
Blog: http://www.aFancifulTwist.com
Website: http://www.VanessaValencia.com
In a message dated 11/9/2012 3:07:04 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time,
Oh, I love how you played the great pumpkin liquid experimentator extraordinaire!!! That was fun to read!
I have made pumpkin soup before (from canned pumpkin–shhhhhh!), but it has been a while. I will have to try that again. I had some yummy pumpkin soup at a tea room recently.
We are also having the uber warm days here, too. We go along thinking it will be warm foreeeeeevvvver, when suddenly we get a cold snap, and we rush to get the winter clothes and blankets out of storage. Then as suddenly as it came, that cold snap will be history, and it will be back to the warmy days around here!
This is begging for a spike of dark rum, brandy, or bourbon.
For the love of squash! <3 <3 <3 Loved reading this. I had all this sweet syrupy pumpkin water and wondered if any other kitchen witches were out there doing something with it.