Pumpkin Butter
The sweet and warming spices found in this pumpkin butter elevates your toast, pancakes, and even plain yogurt.
Did you know that pumpkin is a fruit? Yup, blew my mind as well. From a botanical perspective, it’s the product of the flowering plant and contains seeds, hence the fruit classification.
Growing up I always thought that if something wasn’t sweet, it was automatically put in the “vegetable” category (apologies avocados, cucumbers and tomatoes!).
So, this pumpkin butter is basically a fruit spread. What a great condiment to have in your kitchen during pumpkin spice season!
This fruit spread is great on toast, pancakes, warm muffins, or even stirred into plain yougurt. If you’re baking any fall desserts, you can even try swirling some into your cake batter!
This only takes a half hour to make. A small jar of this would be nice to have handy in your fridge during the autumn months for that pumpkin flavour.
Pumpkin Butter
Ingredients
- 2 cups canned 100% pure pumpkin (about 462mL)
- ¼ cup pure maple syrup (60mL)
- ¼ cups brown sugar
- ½ tsp ground cinnamon
- ⅛ tsp ground ginger
- ⅛ tsp ground allspice
- ⅛ tsp ground cloves
- ⅛ tsp ground nutmeg
- ½ cup apple juice
- ¼ tsp salt
- ½ tsp pure vanilla extract
Instructions
- In a saucepan, combine all the ingredients, except for the vanilla extract, and stir well. Bring mixture to a boil over medium-high heat.
- When the mixture comes to a boil, reduce the heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. You can partially cover the saucepan to minimize any splatter.
- Remove the pan from the heat, and stir in the vanilla.
- Allow to cool. Transfer to an airtight container and refrigerate.
Notes
- This can be kept in a sealed container in the fridge for up to two weeks, or frozen for about six months.
- Make sure that you don’t mistakenly use pumpkin pie filling instead of 100% pure pumpkin puree. The former has a lot of sugar and additives, so your pumpkin butter won’t come out the same.
- I like making my own “pumpkin pie” spice mix. If you already have a mix in your spice cabinet, feel free to us that in place of the warming spices in this recipe.
- If you don’t have apple juice (or apple cider), feel free to substitute water, but you may want to add another tablespoon of sugar.
- If you want the pumpkin to have a thicker consistency, you can continue to simmer uncovered.