How to candy your pumpkin

Candied pumpkin, plantains and guavas are some of my favorite snacks/desserts. You may not know this but pumpkins, along with beans and maize, were the most important food items in Meso-America (Aztecs, Toltecs, Olmecs, Maya). My mom has been candying pumpkin forever and it really resembles pumpkin pie with maple syrup but with half the work. Essentially you are making a caramel that is flavored with some spices and that caramel enters the pumpkin and tastes incredible. When we have too much of this pumpkin candy … I make hot chocolate with it (recipe here).

This is a very simple recipe, and although you are using sugar, I do consider it to be a natural sort of healthy snack. The actual recipe is dairy free but it is normal to accompany this snack with an extra large glass of milk. I like to add a scoop of vanilla ice cream, or garnish with whipped cream.  

Below is our pumpkin patch in California and my parents hunting for pumpkins. You have to plant them every year and they take up a lot of space. Every time I go visit they send me back with hundreds of pumpkins, the one that I had used for this recipe had already began to sprout since I had it for a few weeks. But that won’t affect the final product.

We cook the pumpkin with the exterior still attached, but you can take it off you’d like. I find that it’s too hard to peel, and keeping the thick skin on while cooking, holds the pumpkin together. So even if you do not want to eat the skin, I suggest you leave it on.

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