Last week was National Curry Week. Here's how to make curried pumpkin gingerbread. Your preparation time is about 15 minutes. You'll be cooling the food down about 10 minutes. And cooking time will be about 20 minutes. Just in time for Halloween, you can make curried pumpkin squares or bars and pumpkin syrup from all those leftover pumpkins. In Sacramento, it's also the Hindu, Sikh, and Jain Festival of Lights, and a chance to eat more curried foods.
If you want to get a lot more recipes for sweets and savory meals, Diwali falls on October 26, 2011. You can learn all about cooking for Diwali. For our family that celebrates the holidays of the peoples of the world, at 6 to 8:30 p.m. on this coming Tuesday, learn how to cook for Diwali in South Asian style. The location is the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op, 1914 Alhambra Blvd, Sacramento. The room is adjacent to the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op store in the Learning Center and Cooking School. Cost is $45 for nonmembers and $35 for Natural Co-op members. For more information on the cooking class, check out the Sacramento Natural Food Co-op website. Click on "Learning Center and Cooking School."
In the meantime, if you want to bake curried pumpkin gingerbread squares or bars, here's a recipe that combines South Asian spices with pumpkin (a new world vegetable) and spices such as ginger, cloves, curry, turmeric, and cinnamon with bananas. You can top the gingerbread bars with curried pumpkin syrup made from organic raw creamed honey and star anise with vanilla, ginger, and other spices.
Both recipes are below for pumpkin squares and pumpkin syrup with which to top it. For those who can't have sugars, use a pinch or two of stevia to sweeten the syrup. For the pumpkin squares, bars, or brownie shapes, the pumpkin is sweetened with mashed bananas and a pinch of stevia instead of white table sugar. Eggs also are used to lighten and 'air' up the pumpkin squares.
Ingredients
2 or 3 eggs (for an airy, fluffy almost soufflé-type taste), use 3 eggs. For a regular gingerbread bar-type taste, use 2 eggs
pinch of stevia
3/4 cup canned pureed pumpkin
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup coconut flour or 3/4 cup ground almond meal (or you can use half and half of each)
1/4 cup ground flax seeds (flax seed meal)
1 teaspoon baking powder (non-aluminum type)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2 mashed bananas
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 cup of whey, hemp, or rice protein powder
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Lightly oil or spray a 9-inch square brownie pan with any one of your choice of various oils such as: extra virgin olive oil, rice bran oil, grapeseed oil, sesame seed oil, or coconut oil.
Beat the two eggs. Add a pinch of stevia and the two mashed bananas. Beat again getting the air into those eggs. Beat for about a minute or two.
Now add the 3/4 cup of pureed canned pumpkin to the egg, banana, and stevia mixture. Beat again for about a minute or two or by hand up to two and a half minutes. If you're using an electric mixture, beat for two minutes at medium speed. By hand beat for a minute or two or as long as you can beat, but not more than two and a half minutes by hand.
Now combine the dry ingredients such as the 1/4 cup of ground flax seed meal, coconut flour and/or the almond meal, the powdered or fresh chopped ginger, curry powder, turmeric, protein powder, and cinnamon. You also can choose between using either the almond meal or the coconut flour or use half and half of each, depending upon your preference and taste. The almond meal can be ground in a dry grinder such as a Vitamix dry grinder or you can purchase almond meal or organic coconut flour from a health food store or online.
If you use fresh ginger instead of powdered, chop or dice very finely and peel the ginger first so the skin of the fresh ginger won't get in people's teeth. For convenience, you can use powdered ginger.
Add the dry ingredients to the pumpkin and egg mixture. Stir until mixed. When the lumps are gone and the ingredients are moistened into a paste-like consistency, pour into the pan. Bake 20 minutes or until a fork or wooden pick comes out clean when you stick it into the center.
Let the gingerbread 'brownies' or bars cool for 10 minutes in the pan. Cut in squares as if these were brownies or bars. Serve warm topped with pumpkin syrup. Here's how to make the pumpkin syrup.
Curried pumpkin syrup to pour over the top of your gingerbread 'brownies.'
1 small pumpkin
4 cups water
1 pinch of stevia
1/4 teaspoon curry powder
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
1 cup organic creamed raw honey
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cloves (more if you want the taste of cloves increased)
1/4 teaspoon powdered ginger
1/4 teaspoon allspice
2 star anise
After you peel the pumpkin and remove the seeds, which you can roast later and eat as soft, baked pumpkin seeds, if you prefer, cut the pumpkin into 1/4 inch to 1/2 cubes or dice the peeled pumpkin.
In a pot cook the pumpkin with the cup of honey, spices, and the pinch of stevia. Let the pumpkin and spices simmer for 15 minutes. Let cool. Strain the pumpkin. When lukewarm, pour the pumpkin syrup over your gingerbread squares. The syrup can be stored in covered jars for a week in the refrigerator.
Comments