I got a bug up my butt to make pumpkin butter without any refined sugar.  I LOVE pumpkin butter.  So much so that I bought 12 jars of it last year at Trader Joe’s so that I wouldn’t run out when it went out of season.  That may have been overkill as I still have 6 jars in my cupboard.  The second ingredient in that pumpkin butter is sugar-BOO! Before I embarked on my “clean” pumpkin butter I did a TON of research.  I probably looked at 50 recipes before putting mine together.  As you know my first batch was an big huge FAIL-too many spices.  My second batch, however, is DELICIOUS!

Ingredients:

3 Sugar Pumpkins (or 40 ounces of canned pumpkin though it won’t be as flavorful)
3/4 Cup Honey
3/4 Cup Maple Syrup
1 Cup Apple Juice
1 TBSP Cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp Ground Ginger
1/4 tsp Ground Cloves
1/8 tsp Nutmeg
Zest of 1 Meyer Lemon
Juice of 1 Meyer Lemon
2 tsp Vanilla

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350*. Wash pumpkins well. De-stem and cut in half. Scoop out guts-I found that the scoop you get in carving pumpkin kits works the best.

Place pumpkins face down on a foil lined cookie sheet and cover with foil.

Bake in oven until soft. ~1.5 hours.

When pumpkins are cooled, scoop out the insides and discard the skin.

Run it through the food processor in batches to get pumpkin puree.

Place pumpkin puree, honey, syrup, apple juice, lemon zest and juice, and all spices EXCEPT the vanilla in a crock pot and stir WELL. Alternately you can do this on the stove and bring it to a low simmer and stir it often and WATCH it.

Cover with a splatter guard or put the lid on half way.  If you leave the lid on it won’t reduce because the steam will be trapped in the pot.

Splatter guard (preferred):

Lid:

Then cook:

On high for 4 hours:

Then on low for another 2 or so hours:

Stirring occasionally.  Some people just put it on low and let it go overnight or while they’re at work.  That made me nervous and I wanted to stir it so I did it while I was home.

Once it’s to a consistency you like, place it in a container and store overnight in the fridge.

The next day, run it through a food processor again and add the vanilla.

ENJOY!

*Please Note: Some recipes out there will tell you that you can put pumpkin butter in a warm bath to can it and that it will be good for up to a year.  The USDA does NOT recommend canning pumpkin butter-it does not keep well and can grow dangerous bacteria.  It can however be kept in the freezer up to 1 year and in the refrigerator for 3-4 weeks.

Lucy gave it 2 thumbs up!

*This made 10 pint jars of butter.

Can you tell I’m a little obsessed with my crock pot right now? I found this recipe on Crock Pot 365-a great crock pot recipe site.  I made a modified version of this recipe. It was really good-I thought better than the other Apricot Chicken that I made.  That one was more Asian influenced and this one wasn’t (despite some soy sauce).

Ingredients:

• 1 pound frozen skinless chicken meat-I use thigh since Shaun hates breasts (chicken breasts…)
• 10 ounce jar of apricot preserves-no sugar
• 1 tsp dried onion flakes (sorry Kath!)
• 1 TBSP garlic aioli mustard
• 1 TBSP Braggs Amino
• 1/2 tsp ginger
• 1/2 tsp red chili flakes

Place the chicken in the crock pot. Mix all the other ingredients in a bowl:

And then smother the chicken:

Set the crock pot on

And then:

For:

hours (6-8 for frozen. 4-6 on high for defrosted).

I made brown rice and just chopped some brussel sprouts and carrots and sautéed them in a little vegan butter, S+P, and cider vinegar.

Look at how pretty it was:

Here’s the finished product in the pot:

Plated:

Lucy didn’t have any-her appetite has disappeared 🙁 She has croup poor thing.  Shaun took his first bite and said “Wow this is AWESOME!” Later I asked him to rate it and he said 3 stars.  I asked how something could be awesome and then only get 3 stars.  His response? “It’s chicken.”  So many people comment on how Shaun will eat anything.  No one believes me when I tell them his particular. Do you believe me?