Baked Stuffed Pumpkin

The stuffing part of this recipe from Country Living magazine is wonderful and I would make it again. What I wouldn't do is stuff it into small pumpkins unless I baked it long enough to cook the pumpkins too. Cutting these pumpkins was a real learning experience for me. I brought in four small sugar pumpkins from the garage and with a combination of an electric knife and a butcher knife sliced the tops off the first two exactly like they are shown in the recipe picture. They were gorgeous. The next two were like cement and while locked in combat with a large knife and a small pumpkin, I was seriously questioning my sanity. In the end, the pumpkins won and looked nothing like the picture.

a nice one and a not-so-nice one

Notice the stems of these two pumpkins, the first two were green (apparently freshly picked) and the other two were withered and brown. So my advice would be to use freshly picked pumpkins for the shell part of this recipe or use a hack saw to cut them. The recipe calls for cooking the stuffed pumpkins 35 minutes. In order to eat the pumpkin too, it needs at least another 40 minutes of baking. The stuffing cooks on the stovetop, but would not be hurt by more time in the oven.

The taste testers (Karen, Andrew and me) loved the stuffing with or without its pumpkin shell. It really seemed a waste to throw the shells out afterwards. They were impressive while we ate, but were basically just a bowl.