Pumpkin Challenge Days 1 - 5

Day 1: Pumpkin Banana Bread

This delicious and vegan recipe was pulled from Hidden Fruits and Veggies! It turned out great, and I chalk that up to an excellent recipe... But how could it turn out any other way when it is full of chocolate chips?

Day 2: Pumpkin Chai Latte

A favourite staying-in go-to of mine for the pumpkin challenge! Made with Tassimo chai concentrate, warm almond milk, and large heaping spoonfuls of pumpkin puree with cinnamon on top. I chose to top this mug with coconut-milk whipped cream (if you have not tried it before, vegan/dairy-free or not, YOU SIMPLY MUST).

Day 3: Pumpkin Pizza

This pumpkin pizza was made for our house-warming pizza party last week! It was inspired by this recipe from Taste.com, but shares few similarities, as I was using pumpkin puree. According to those that ate it, it was a success! I replaced pizza sauce with pumpkin puree and topped it with cauliflower, spinach, caramelized onions, and rosemary. I believe that the original recipe would definitely be worth going back to and making according to the instructions!

Day 4: Pumpkin Applesauce Muffins

My sources tell me that these cute muffins were light and delicious, and their easily approachable size make them super snacks. The recipe comes from Southern In Law, and is one I would turn to for light desserts or party treats in the future!

Day 5: Pumpkin Pasta Sauce

Day 5 was a day of rushing around and realizing: Oh no! I don't have a pumpkin thing yet! From that, you get: Pumpkin puree turned pasta sauce. I quickly heated the puree in a pan and mixed it with a few spices, including curry powder, and threw it on some pasta with asparagus before heading to work - admittedly not my greatest creation, but it did taste good despite its hasted creation!

Pumpkin Challenge: Days 30 and 31

That wonderful moment when I get to say, "the penultimate day" has come and gone.
Today is the ultimate day of the Pumpkin Challenge (I'm going to go with the 4th annual). 

My final two days of the Pumpkin Challenge have yielded some of my favourite baking to date! Pumpkin does, almost by default, make things special and delicious; however, these items (with pumpkin in them) turned out really delicious and texture-friendly and lovely anyways! The pumpkin ended up being a bonus, rather than the factor that made them doable (much like the case of the miniature pumpkin tarts of a few days ago).

Day 31: Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls, vegan (Chocolate-Covered Katie)

Day 31: Pumpkin Scones with chocolate chips, vegan (Feeding My Addiction)

I have so enjoyed my pumpkin challenge this year! It was a challenge to keep things interesting and different throughout the challenge in terms of food (because I'm sure the blog posts were not always interesting and/or different).

However, the satisfaction of having made so many new foods and trying so many new techniques has been exciting for me, and I think that I've made a few steps forward in my culinary skills!

Until next year -

Pumpkin Challenge: Day 29

The paleo diet - if a caveman (ahem, cave person) wouldn't eat it, neither do you!

If you could hunt for it and find it in the wild, then it's yours to eat - nuts, seasonal fruits and veggies, meat, seeds, etc. Essentially, it is a "natural" diet, in that you aren't dealing with agriculturally-produced foods (sorry, pasta).

This is all information I've gathered from the Internet, so take it with a grain of salt (did cave people eat salt?) - but what I am trying to do here, is offer a prelude to today's pumpkin item:

Paleo Pumpkin Pie Cupcakes! (recipe) (also vegan!)

These photos are pretty awful quality (I blame yellowish lighting and decor), but I believe that they capture the essence of what this recipe turned into: A bit of a squishy, but clean and yummy, treat.

The best part about these was definitely using my mini food processor from Cuisinart! I have only used it twice, but the past two days have been made a whole lot more exciting as a result of it. I described the feeling of using it as a feeling of having a missing piece of my daily life - my mom seems to be okay with this description.

I added some coconut ice cream to make it more "pie"-like, and I would say it worked! I also ate my samples before they had completely cooled, and this may have contributed to how squishy they were. Currently, they are chilling (literally) in my fridge, and I plan to have another go at them tomorrow.

Pumpkin Challenge: Day 28

Tuesday has been a continuation of the trying to cross out my to-do-list items. Tuesday has been a somewhat back-to-back sort of day.

Tuesday was a day to combine my consumption challenges into one item!

A desire to eat something sweet joined forces with a desire to clean out my system and the need to have something pumpkiny, and Simple Green Smoothies answered my call with the Pumpkin Chocolate Chip smoothie.

The combination of spinach and pumpkin may be deceptive, because the reality is - with the magic of fruit, cocoa powder and almond milk - this smoothie is great!

Pumpkin Challenge: Days 23, 24, 25, 26, and 27

In my defence, the Internet was inaccessible where I stayed this weekend.

Then Monday was a bit disorganized and required attention to bring order back to my life.

I don't have any excuse for how Thursday was left out of the mix.

Now it is Tuesday, and I can provide an update for each pumpkin item that I did consume over the weekend! It was a yummy weekend for pumpkin things, and a self-care weekend for Katie.

Thursday the 23rd: Mini Pumpkin Chocolate-Chip Muffins (vegan) from: Unknown (my Pinterest wall likely has the recipe somewhere...)

The week had been long and I felt that chocolate was in order (as per usual). I felt a need for some therapeutic baking to get me through one more week day, and these little muffins hit the spot! I absolutely love miniature baking.

Friday the 24th: Pumpkin Apple Muffins (vegan) from Minimalist Baker

Holy moly, these muffins were yummy. I mistakenly "sliced" rather than "diced" the apples for the recipe, so the apple portion of the snack was fairly large, and made the muffins a little gooey while you ate them - but that's okay! They were light and moist and naturally sweet, and I love oats in most any baked good.

Saturday the 25th: Pumpkin Pie Steamed Almond Milk from G.I.'s Blue Parrot Cafe

Since I spent the weekend with my family, I recognized that baking another item during the weekend would be unlikely to be eaten (since my family eats small quantities of everything), so I decided to go for a pumpkin item while I was out, instead. I went to the Blue Parrot Cafe for a nice light steamed almond milk with pumpkin pie flavour!

Sunday the 26th: Pumpkin Waffles (vegan) from My Darling Vegan

To celebrate my parents returning from their trip, I decided that some snack-sized waffles for brunch would be appropriate. I found this recipe from My Darling Vegan, and would happily go back! I think I put too much in the waffle-stick maker, because these didn't fluff up as much as I had hoped, but they tasted delicious, and that's really all that matters.

Monday the 27th: Chickpea Pumpkin Fritters (baked) from lunchbox.com

This recipe had sat on my Pumpkin Challenge board on Pinterest for some time, and I am glad that I finally made it yesterday! This were an easy meal/snack to make, and I have several left over that I can use for sides at lunch/dinner, or for a meal! I bet they would turn into soup, as well...

This post has been a bit excessive in order to catch up on everything, but I hope you're still with me - I only have 4 more pumpkin items to go, and I'm still not sick of it!

Pumpkin Challenge: Day 22

Yesterday, as I pulled out my tools for making miniature pumpkin treats, I was met with a surprise:

My roommate was already going to bake a pumpkin treat!

Since I was having a moment of academic inspiration, I decided to take advantage of this opportunity to keep studying while she took on the mixing and measuring and pumpkin-treat creating.

The flat was very slowly beginning to smell like pumpkin as the oven did it's thing, and then all at once, about 20 minutes into the baking process, the whole atmosphere smelled of pumpkin spices and fresh-baked goodness.

The recipe used for this pumpkin bread was originally for banana bread, this strategy was something that I was going to try myself, but it turned out my roommate got to it before me!

It was delicious, though, so I might just make my own anyways...

Pumpkin Challenge: Day 21

Today marked a small but exciting event, and since breakfast is the most important/one of my favourite meals of the day, it felt appropriate to start the day off with breakfast being super.

I do not often eat pancakes, but when I do, the day is either going to be tough, and thus requires a breakfast to counter the struggle ahead, or the day is great and deserves a breakfast that reflects it. This day was going to be an energy struggle, but marked a nice day, and so breakfast needed to be good.

Thus - vegan pumpkin pancakes. (recipe from Minimalist Baker)