Roasted Pumpkin Seeds, Five Ways
I tend to post all of our family recipes on this site so as to have an easy way to access them and to send them to others for reference. Pumpkin seeds are no exception. I can’t tell you how many times we “forget the way we did it last year” when it comes to holiday-specific snacks like these. So here are our instructions for Roasted Pumpkin Seeds, Five Ways.
PREPARATION
You need clean, preferably dry pumpkin seeds or “pepitas” in order to roast them well. After you have separated your pumpkin seeds from the pulp of the pumpkin, place them in a colander and rinse them clean. If time is an issue, scatter the seeds on top of a dry, absorbent towel, cover with a second towel and pat dry. If you have 12-24 hours, spread the seeds onto a parchment or silpat-lined pan and air-dry.
INGREDIENTS
Basic Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
1.5 c pumpkin seeds
2 tbs oil or melted butter
1+tsp sea or table salt to taste
Hot & Spicy Chile Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
1.5 c pumpkin seeds
2 tbs olive oil OR 2 tbs melted unsalted butter
1-3 tsp Sriracha Chile sauce or Frank’s Red hot sauce
.5 tsp ancho chile powder (or whatever you have on hand)
.5 tsp chipotle chile powder (or whatever you have on hand)
.5 tsp sweet smoked paprika
.5-1 tsp garlic powder
.5-1 tsp onion powder
1+ tsp sea salt or salt to taste
May be served with slices of lime to be squeezed over seeds.
Savoury Garlic Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
1.5 c pumpkin seeds
2 tbs olive (or canola) oil OR 2 tbs melted unsalted butter
1-1.5 tbs minced fresh garlic or garlic in oil
1 tsp garlic powder
fresh ground black pepper to taste
1+ tsp sea salt or salt to taste
Pumpkin Pie Spice Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
1.5 c pumpkin seeds
2 tbs melted unsalted butter or 2 tbs canola oil
3 tbs brown sugar
[1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp allspice]
OR
[2 tsp pumpkin pie spice]
Honey Orange Pumpkin Seeds
1.5 c pumpkin seeds
2 tbs melted unsalted butter or 2 tbs canola oil
3 tbs honey
1-2 tsp orange zest
Optional: 1-2 tbs orange juice, to be added before or after raosting.
METHOD
Heat oven to 350 F.
In a bowl, toss seeds with oil or melted butter and all other ingredients.
[You may wish to leave out the salt until after the seeds have roasted and then salt them according to taste.]
Spread coated seeds in a single layer on a parchment or silpat-lined pan.
Bake 25-30 minutes.
[Feel free to toss or flip the seeds at the 15 minute point if you'd like. We don't bother.
Sometimes the seeds smoke and the coatings get quite dark in the oven.
At least, for us, this is normal, and we like the taste of the results.]
Toss with reserved or additional salt, sugar, or citrus juice if so desired.
Enjoy!
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Quick & Easy Mummy Cookies
It’s been a crazy few weeks, with little time for baking. Luckily, I had sugar cookie dough in the freezer [recipe below], so I was able to whip up a little Halloween-week magic for the kids while they were carving their pumpkins. Here’s the how-to, with a gallery of cookie pics and this year’s pumkin handiwork below. [Note my signature pumpkin: the ? I make one every year!]
Quick & Easy Mummy Cookies
makes 24-30 cookies
recipe may be doubled
Ingredients
.66 c unsalted butter
.75 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tbs milk
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking powder
.5 tsp salt
2 c flour
Small or medium sized gingerbread-man cookie cutter.
1.5-2 c icing sugar
2 tsp vanilla
milk by the tablespoon full
black sugar or black sprinkles
a chopstick, skewer or straw
Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Farenheit.
Cream the butter and sugar.
Add eggs, milk, and vanilla and mix until combined.
Sift in the baking powder, salt, and flour and mix.
Once the dough forms into a ball, wrap it in plastic film and refrigerate it for at least 30 minutes.
Roll refrigerated dough to between 1/4 and 1/8 of an inch.
To make things quick and easy, I roll my dough between waxed paper sheets.
Cut cookies with gingerbread-man cutter, and place them on parchment lined cookie sheets.
Bake for 7-9 minutes.
Cool on wire racks.
Prepare icing by mixing icing sugar with vanilla.
Add milk 1 tbs at a time until you have a thick but squeezable icing.
Place icing in a pastry bag with a small circular tip, a squeeze bottle, or a plastic bag with one small corner sliced off.
Squeeze icing across each cookie in somewhat irregular horizontal strokes.
Pour some black sugar crystals or sprinkles into a small ramekin or bowl.
Wet the tip of a chopstick, skewer or straw slightly and dip in sugar or sprinkles.
Use the sugar-dusted stick to dot black eyes on each cookie mummy.
Enjoy!
Lunchbox Season Pumpkin Gallery 2012: Tobes, Bea, Papa, Mama
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Creepy Window Silhouettes
October 30, 2011
Last Halloween, we wanted to make our house “spooky” for the trick-or-treaters, so we added window silhouettes to our front door and front windows. When the holiday was over, we rolled them up and stored them for future use. We’ll be using them again this year, in different places, with the addition of a few new candidates.
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Last Year's Cat n Mouse
Materials
Black Construction Paper
A Roll of White Craft Paper (from an easel or art-table set, ours is from Ikea)
Scissors
White or Light Coloured Chalk or Colored Pencil
Tape
Glue (Optional)
Measuring Tape or Ruler
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Last Year's Skelly
Instructions
Measure the size of your window and cut a sheet of white paper from your roll to fit the space. If necessary, tape two pieces of paper together to get the size and shape you need.
Use white chalk to draw or trace a spooky shape or group of shapes on your black paper. Again, if your paper isn’t big enough to fit the image you want, tape a few pieces of paper together from their undersides to get the size and shape you need.
Owl 2011
If you don’t want to draw a silhouette free-hand, download and print Halloween Templates from websites like Country Living and Activity Village, cut out the templates, and trace around them on your black paper. Cut your black silhouette shapes and glue them (or tape them from the undersides) onto the front of your white sheet of paper.
Hang your silhouetted sheet in the window using tape at the four corners.
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2011 Dragon at Night
Tips and Tricks
If you’re using a template (we used the Owl from Activity Village this year!), try to “spook up” the basic image by cutting out eyes, mouths, bleeding hearts, vampire teeth, etc. with scissors or an exacto knife. You might also cut a few thin curves and lines to represent contours (wings, chins, etc.)
For more template ideas, try searching Google Images, especially Tattoos! We looked for “Dragon Tattoo Images” to get a template for the elaborate dragon silhouette we made this year. (It was much easier than it looks!).
If you want to have more visibility from your windows, replace the white craft paper with clear cellophane wrapping paper. Or, you could forgo the background paper entirely and simply tape the black shapes to your windows. However, your shapes may not be visible from the street until it is quite dark outside.
Save your silhouettes for next year by rolling them up and securing them with an elastic band. Store them on the inside or wrapped around the outside of an old empty cardboard tube from a roll of used up wrapping paper.
NOW SAY BOOOO!!!!
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Brown Bag Owl Puppets
October 26, 2011
Halloween is less than a week away. This weekend, we’ll be re-creating two of our favourite crafts:
and
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Brown Bag Owl Puppets (inspired by the folks at Elmer’s and Free Kids Crafts)
Over the summer, we had a special Egg Day, completing several fun science experiments with eggs. We also found a great use for our leftover egg cartons. We looked online and found a fabulous owl puppet design to try. Of course, the kids put their own spin on it….Here’s how ours turned out:
Materials (dollar store)
Brown Paper Lunch Bags
Egg Cartons
Construction Paper
Markers
Scissors
Glue
Googly Eyes [Optional]
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Step One: Prepare your Cartons
From an egg carton, we cut out two “pairs” of egg holders for the eyes/beaks, and four single cartons for the talons. Our cartons had quite long dividers to keep the eggs in place. So, as we cut our pairs of cartons for the eyes/beaks, we made sure to include the entire central divider. After we cut them out, we bent the dividers downwards so as to form a bird beak. We also cut and bent the edges of the talons so that three of the four sides of the square egg carton were triangle shaped. We then coloured the bird beaks and the talons with our yellow and black markers.
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Step Two: Give the Owl Eyes
We took googly eyes (purchased at the dollar store) and glued them into the bottoms of the egg-carton eyes. If you don’t have googly eyes, just have the kids use markers to draw eyes in the depths of cartons. Each eye could have a slightly different expression, lending a sense of “eeriness” to the occasion.
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Step Three: Colour the Body
Then, with a brown paper lunch bag face up on the table, we traced a U shape on the bag to designate the owl’s breast and belly.
We coloured everything except the space inside of this U-shape a deep, dark brown.
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Step Four: Create the Wings and Ears
Next, each of the kids folded pages of creamy coloured construction paper in half and traced both a small triangular ear shape and a large wing shape along the fold. We cut out these wings and ears and divided them along the fold line so that the kids each had a pair of wings and a pair of ears for their owls. The kids then added some flair by colouring the owl’s wings and ears.
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Step Five: Glue, Glue, Glue…
We used white glue to attach the owl’s eyes/beaks to the bag. Then, we attached the ears above the eyes. We also attached the wings onto the top undersides of the lunch bag. Finally, we attached the talons on to the bottom fronts of each bag.
We let the owls sit and dry for an hour before taking them around the house on a flight!
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Play or Display! Fly these owls around the house! Use them in your puppet shows!! Or, scare some trick-or-treaters at the door!!! When you’re done playing with them, these owls will look great resting on the top of your fireplace mantle. You can also attach them to strings and hang them, windsock-style, from a hook on your front porch!!!!
NOW SAY WHOOOO!!
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Our Sister Site: Summer of Funner
- The Lunchbox Season is Back
- Summer of Funner 2012 Film Festival
- Peach Day! Amaretto Peach Jam, Brown Sugar Vanilla Jam, and Giant Peach Butter
- A Movable Mural
- The Imaginary Beasts of Riverdale Farm
- Mad Scientist Day 2012: Ten “Sweet” Experiments
- The Kids Make Street Eats (with Beer!): Pilsner Pretzels & Hops and Robbers Mustard
- Glam Cans 2012: Kid-Designed Canning Labels DIY
