I have a confession, it has been years since I carved a pumpkin. Probably since my sophomore year of college. I never had the patience and I don’t have a single artistic bone in my body. I really wanted to make homemade pumpkin seeds, though so I asked my husband if he wanted to carve pumpkins and told myself that it could be fun. Well, life happened and we ended up not carving pumpkins. But, I still wanted to make my dang homemade pumpkin seeds! I have a few pumpkins sitting on our front step so I cut into a couple of them, grabbed all the seeds and then put them back, ha! That’s my kind of pumpkin carving because let’s be real, I just wanted to eat some seeds! So, I now have two pumpkins sitting on my stoop with the top cut off but nothing else carved. I call them my faceless carved pumpkins.
I didn’t know exactly how to best clean the pumpkin seeds from the pulp but what I did actually worked well and went pretty quick. If you are like me who doesn’t like to carve pumpkins but wants homemade pumpkin seeds, here’s what to do:
- Cut the top of the pumpkin like you usually do when carving pumpkins (there might be some seeds on it when you pull it off so grab those).
- Instead of fully gutting the pulp like you do when you carve a pumpkin, use your hand and only scrape out the seeds. Your hand works really well because you are able to scrape the seeds out with minimal pulp.
- Add the seeds to a strainer and place the strainer in the sink. With luke warm water, rinse the seeds and remove any leftover pulp. Add clean seeds as you go to a bowl to easily eliminate all the pulp.
- Place an even layer of paper towel on the counter and spread the seeds out evenly. Gently pat dry. I say gently otherwise the seeds will stick to the paper towel (rookie mistake). The seeds don’t need to be completely dry.
- Then continue with the below recipe!
The above process should only take 10-15 minutes. I used one medium to large pumpkin and one small pumpkin to get two full cups of seeds.
I am all Halloweened out after dressing up like Babe the Blue Ox and running a 10 mile relay Saturday. My friend asked if I would be in a Paul Bunyan look a like contest and run the rely. Why I agreed to this, I don’t really know. I haven’t ran in weeks and it was a high of 32 degrees. She then had the bright idea to color my face blue. I was going along with all of it assuming I wouldn’t be the only one dressed in costume running around town that morning. Well, let’s just say we won the look a like contest because we were the only ones in it… picture it, me running through downtown with an all blue outfit and a blue face. Luckily, I decided not to run with my tail and horns. That would have looked really weird. So, my only Halloween plans are to stay home and chow on these pumpkin seeds!
- 2 cups raw pumpkin seeds, cleaned and patted dry
- 2 tsp coconut oil, melted
- 1 tsp maple syrup
- 2 tbsp coconut sugar
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- ⅛ tsp cloves
- ⅛ tsp nutmeg
- Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
- Place the pumpkin seeds in a bowl with the coconut oil and maple syrup and gently toss. Set aside. Add the coconut sugar, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg in a small bowl and mix well. Add the spice mixture to the pumpkin seeds and toss until pumpkin seeds are well coated.
- Spread the pumpkin seeds evenly on a baking sheet and bake for 50 minutes stirring every 15 - 20 minutes.
- Enjoy!