Canning Season ~ Sugar Pie Pumpkins

When I got in from vacation last week, I expected to be met with lots of garden produce to can and freeze. Because of the weather,  I didn’t get nearly what I had hoped for but I got busy with what I found.

We harvested 13 Sugar Pie Pumpkins this year.  These little jewels are sweet and delicious. They  make great pies or other pumpkin desserts.  Seriously, when you think of pumpkin, these are the ones that define the word.

In the past I have made puree and frozen it but some years I can pumpkin. I don’t can puree, that would be too dense and might not get hot enough in the center of the jars. I canned chunks of pumpkin. Here’s how I did it.

First I cut the pumpkins in half and scooped out the seeds. I saved the seeds; some for planting next year and some for roasting. 

Next, I baked the halves on a foil covered baking sheet, 350*F for about 20 minutes. This isn’t long enough to make the flesh mushy but its long enough to make the peel soft so you can peel it easily.

After I peeled it, Lydia cut it into chunks that would fit in the pint jars.

Then we put the chunks in hot pint jars and added boiling water, lids, rings and processed the jars in a pressure canner for 65 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure.

The finished product looks very nice!  To use these, I will open up a pint, drain the water, put the pumpkin     chunks in a bowl and mash them with a fork. This pumpkin can be used anywhere pure pumpkin is called for. Pumpkin must be pressure canned because it doesn’t have enough acid in it to be water bath canned and adding acid would probably make the pumpkin taste “off”.