pump up the jam

After my canning frenzy this summer I took a break, but now I’m back in the swing of it with a fall line up of fruit butters in tow. First up, pumpkin butter.

Sadly, the USDA does not recommend home canning of pumpkin butter. This is because pumpkin is low in acidity and has unpredictable water content, neither of which was optimal when canning. I did can my butter, to sterilize and seal it, but am keeping it in the fridge.

I started with four medium sugar pie pumpkins. Halved and seeded, I placed them cut-side down on a baking sheet lined with parchment and baked them at 350 for a little over an hour.

After roasting them in the oven the flesh shrank, making the skin easy to peel.

So colorful and juicy looking! Once peeled, I chopped the flesh into chunks and put it in my pot. I chose to cook it down a little more before just pureeing it, because some spots were harder than others. In went 2 cups of dark brown sugar, 3 tbsp of molasses, the juice of one lemon, 2 tbsp of pumpkin pie spice and one tbsp of cinnamon.

Once all of the flesh was uniformly soft, I pureed the batch in my Vita-Mix then poured it back in the pot and adjusted sweetness/spices to taste. My goal was to get pumpkin pie filling flavor, but because the spices will really bloom as the butter sits, I didn’t want to go overboard and end up with spreadable potpourri.

Once the butter was ready, I laddled it into jars and processed it in the hot water bath for 10 minutes. This made 4 pints of pumpkin butter.

It’s so delicious- spiced, creamy and rich. I love the taste of fall.