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As I said yesterday, I am at my parents' house for a couple of days and it had been kind of fun to look through their cupboards and get inspiration for cooking and baking with all of their random ingredients. Well, when my dad said he had been eating a lot of pumpkin seeds lately to get more zinc, I knew what my project would be. After seeing a hundred bloggers making their own nut butter, I was going to make my own pumpkin seed butter!! At least, that was the theory...
My dad lightly roasted a bunch of seeds and I snagged 2 cups to make my the glorious creation that was materializing in my head. I started by blending them in a food processor and adding a little bit of maple syrup, vanilla extract and cinnamon.
Now, is it just me or when other bloggers make this stuff, does it not just turn into butter before their eyes?? No matter how long I left it in the food processor, it was like green dust. Luckily, my mum has some deliciously expensive pumpkin seed oil, so I added it in a tablespoon at a time to get a more "buttery" consistency. Well, the first 2 tablespoons of oil did nothing, but then I swear this stuff went from dust to cement in about 2 seconds.
I mean, you couldn't spread it, you could barely scoop it. I tried to eat a bit, and it tasted good, but it was like taffy and got stuck in my teeth. That is not how seed/nut butter is supposed to be!! Not to mention that the oil was now separating out and the ball of glue was just sitting in a puddle of it.
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| Ewww.... |
I knew that I couldn't let such expensive, high-quality ingredients go to waste, so I started brainstorming. My dad suggested sweetening it up a little and making some form of pumpkin halwa. I added a little more maple syrup and a touch of coconut sugar and decided to bake it in a pan to make a makeshift pumpkin brittle.
Well, that failed too. It was still too squishy and oily to resemble anything edible.
However, I quickly remembered my nut butter cookies, which reached the perfect chewy consistency after being frozen. Yes, inspiration struck and I made chewy pumpkin seed fudge! It actually tastes really good too. I love the taste of pumpkin seeds and pumpkin seed oil, and the maple and cinnamon flavours worked beautifully.
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| Looks disgusting, tastes pretty good. |
The colour is scary, because the oil is so dark, but you can bet that this is the most nutrition-packed fudge you will ever meet. Please don't asked me to recall the "recipe". This is a mishap that can never be recreated.
I also took the liberty of looking up some nutrition facts about pumpkin seeds and pumpkin seed oil. They are:
- High in fibre
- Excellent source of B-complex vitamins
- Good for reducing bad cholesterol (LDL)
- Contain high levels of essential minerals (copper, manganese, zinc, calcium, etc.)
- High in mono-unsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs), like oleic acid
- Source of tryptophan - converted to serotonin (the feel-good chemical)
- Source of glutamate - required to synthesize certain anti-stress neurochemicals
- May prevent hair loss, reduce symptoms of arthritis and lower risk of ovarian and prostate cancers
See? You can have delicious, creepy, green fudge that also has tons of health-giving properties!
How's that for turning a fail into a... fail... into a not-so-fail? Eh? EH??
Have you ever made nut or seed butter before? Seriously, what's your secret??
How would you have handled my fail?
