Three Pumpkin Recipe Thursday

Let’s get right to the pumpkin recipes.  1 is ugly, 1 is a Cooking Light recipe boosted with some extra protein, and 1 is so easy it’s not even a recipe at all.

Ugly pumpkin recipe: Overnight Pumpkin Chia Oats

Based on the Oh She Glows recipe, with twice as much protein powder, tons of extra cinnamon, 2 Tbsp of oats and some cinnamon raisin peanut butter – totals to 200 calories and tastes just like pumpkin pie filling.

Pumpkin for dinner: Pumpkin Ravioli with Gorgonzola Cream Sauce

I bought my dad a pasta maker for Christmas last year and it only took us until mid-October to break it out.

The Cooking Light recipe calls for wonton wrapper ravioli, but we used Mario Batali’s basic pasta recipe for our first shot at homemade pasta.

I don’t like gorgonzola on its own, but it made a killer sauce.  I picked up a nice hunk of the cheese at TJ’s this past weekend in hopes of making this sauce this week.

CL’s pumpkin filling was less than exciting (including bread crumbs), so I made my own!

Protein Pumpkin Ravioli Filling

1/2 can beans (I used great northern, I’m sure garbanzo would work fine)

2 Tbsp shredded parmesan

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

2 Tbsp greek yogurt

2 Tbsp ricotta

1/2 tsp dried sage

In case you were wondering, yes, the filling is delicious on it’s own.

And yes, rolling out your own pasta dough takes 25 minutes, not 5.  You have to roll each piece at every setting (from a 7 to a 1) to progressively make it thinner.  I’m hoping there’s a learning curve and it’s a lot simpler next time.

About half of our sheets of pasta stuck together by the time we used up our filling – so I’d make half the recipe next time (we still got about 40 raviolis from approximately half the dough).

They cook quickly, in about 4 minutes in simmering water.

The sauce was very rich but it complimented the pasta without being overpowering.  Definitely something I would make again!

Pseudo-Pumpkin Cookie Recipe

1 box cake mix

1 can pumpkin

Seriously, that’s it.  Not even a recipe.

You’re supposed to use spice cake mix, but I only had a white cake mix on hand and it worked fine – I added some spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice) and chocolate chips to half the batter and butterscotch chips to the other.

Because they’re made with cake mix, a tiny flattened teaspoon of dough turns in to a huge puffy cookie – about the size of your palm for only 100 calories. 

Are you pumpkin-ed out yet?  I’m not, obviously.

Have you ever made homemade pasta?