Pumpkins. As a nation us Brits probably only encounter a pumpkin when Halloween rolls round and even then I doubt many of us eat the innards after we’ve finished hacking a face into one. I know Pumpkin Pie is a Thanksgiving staple in the U.S but we don’t have anything like that here and I think a lot of people are a bit daunted about where to start with a pumpkin and what to do it, and most of the time pumpkins are generally bigger than the International Space Station and unless you have a meat cleaver it’s a bit of a battle trying to slice them to bits.
Another new feature I’ve dragged out for the depths of my imagination (which, judging by my groundbreaking titles is more like a puddle than a never ending abyss of creativeness).
As you probably gathered from the highly innovative concept, each edition will feature one ingredient used two different ways. The two recipes featured here came about after I was sent the Dietary Specials new recipe Shortcrust Pastry.
I must preface this now by saying this is NOT a sponsored post, I just really love this product.
An ability to produce homemade mince pie’s is a skill in other people that I greatly admire, and at the start of the year I decided I wanted to be one of these clever people and endeavoured to make my very own mince pies, from scratch, from the pastry to the mincemeat, every last bit of it would be made by my own fair hands. I talked about the hitch I had with the mincemeat, but luckily I found a Gluten-Free mincemeat recipe (god bless Nigella) which I made at the very start of November, and finally this week I decided the time was right to unite mince with pie and bake a batch.