Pumpkin, Three Ways

When I first heard about the pumpkin shortage this year, I ran to my local supermarket and snatched up as many cans of pumpkin purée as I could find. I just can't imagine the fall holidays without the stuff! (And yeah, I know true foodies cook down their own pumpkin, but what can I say, I'm lazy and I don't notice enough of a difference in the taste of the two to warrant the work of making my own purée.)

I have a ton of the stuff sitting on my shelves now, just begging to be used. I've already made pumpkin cupcakes, bread, and muffins this fall, but I wasn't sure what to make after that. I definitely wanted to try something different, though. Fortunately, almost all of the food blogs I read have published pumpkin-themed recipes this month because, well, 'tis the season. I decided to give three recipes I'd seen recently a try, and boy, am I glad I did!

First, I made these savory pumpkin cheddar biscuits, from the blog Slashfood:


I didn't make too many changes to this recipe -- I just added a little extra garlic and some fresh garlic chives to the dough, and some extra shredded cheese on top. Also, if you're anti-Bisquick, you could try making a homemade version of the baking mix, or playing around with adding pumpkin to a from-scratch drop biscuit recipe.

Next up were these delicious pumpkin brownies from Baking Bites:


I used walnuts in these instead of pecans, because I didn't have any of the latter in the house. Also, because I'm not crazy about the flavor of cloves, I cut that down to 1/8 teaspoon. I added in a little ground ginger (probably about 1/8 teaspoon) as well. In addition, because I had some left over from another recipe, I sprinkled both milk chocolate and butterscotch chips into the brownie batter. These were phenomenal!

Finally, check out these pumpkin pie bars from Joy the Baker. These were gobbled up so quickly that I didn't even have time to take a picture of them. They would be fabulous for both Halloween AND Thanksgiving.

Do you have any other favorite pumpkin recipes? I am thinking of trying my hand at making some sort of pumpkin pasta or pasta sauce next. Maybe soup, but it'd have to be an amazing pumpkin soup to compete with the killer butternut squash soup recipe I already make!