Bread Pudding In Pumpkin Shell
By: Deirdre Holmes
Published: Wednesday, February 10, 2010 - 10:50am

Ingredients




1 pie pumpkin or nice-looking winter squash (roughly 4-5 lbs)
2 cups milk (or non-dairy substitute)
1/4 cup butter (or non-dairy substitute such as coconut oil)
 cup maple sugar or maple syrup
2 cups stale bread, cubed
3 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup raisins and/or dried cranberries or sultanas
1/2 walnuts and/or pecans
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 allspice
1/2 ground cloves
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon maple liquor (optional, but if you’re in Vermont, you will not be disappointed if you treat yourself to a bottle of “Cabin Fever
1 cup pumpkin seeds
butter or oil, just enough to coat pan

maple sugar

cinnamon

Preparation

1 Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 2 Wash pumpkin. 3 Cut off the top of the pumpkin and clean the inside. 4 Brush the top and inside with some melted butter 5 Replace cover on pumpkin and heat in oven for 20 minutes. 6 While pumpkin is in oven, scald milk. 7 Remove from heat, add butter and maple syrup. 8 Once butter has fully melted, pour mixture over stale bread cubes and let sit for 5-10 minutes. 9 Then add eggs, raisins, nuts, spices, vanilla and splash of liquor (if using). 10 Take pumpkin out of oven, remove the top and fill with the bread mixture and grate some fresh nutmeg over the top.  This time without the top, place pumpkin on a cookie sheet and bake for roughly 1 1/2 hours or until the pumpkin is soft and the pudding is cooked. 11 To make the topping: melt the butter in a small skillet, add the pumpkin seeds. 12 Give them a shake or a stir several times and watch them closely since they burn easily. 13 Once browned and starting to pop, remove from heat and sprinkle with cinnamon and maple sugar. 14 Remove pumpkin from oven and allow to cool slightly. 15 Serve as boat-like slices with a wedge of pumpkin as the base, filled with bread pudding and perhaps a nice dollop of vanilla yogurt, creme fraiche, whipped cream or ice cream on the top. 16 Sprinkle all over with pumpkin seeds.

About


Around Halloween, I posted a stuffed pumpkin dish I like to make. Halloween is certainly the time of year during which the pumpkin gets the most attention, but this nutrition-backed vegetable keeps very well, and is available all fall and winter.  Since you don’t need to keep them in the refrigerator, while you are storing them, you get the additional joy of having this big, brightly colored fall decoration in your kitchen or on your dining table.
I used one of my pumpkins to make the following dish over Thanksgiving weekend and again over New Years.  During fall and winter, making a bread pudding in a pumpkin is a delicious, healthy and seasonal dessert which also happens to look great on the buffet table.
Thanks to Wilson Farm in Lexington, Massachusetts (my childhood farmstand) for the inspiration for this recipe.