Experimental Pumpkin Dessert

The cool rainy days of Fall and Winter bring out the cook in me!

I harvested my meager pumpkin crop a while back - 2 small pumpkins that I grew from seeds I saved from a Cinderella Pumpkin.  When I read about how great pumpkin seeds are for you and saw a recipe for roasting them, I thought it was a perfect time to break into the little pumpkins sitting on my kitchen window sill.

I found a total of eight seeds - not exactly enough to turn on the oven and roast pumpkin seeds.

Plan B - Find an interesting recipe and at least use the pumpkin meat.  So I first cut the skin off both pumpkins and cut them into 1" squares and cooked them in a small amount of water until they were soft and mashed them.  (Drained excess water before mashing)

It's so nice to have the internet - But a bit distracting to try to focus on a single recipe - there are so many to choose from.

Here's the recipe I found:  

Layered Pumpkin Dessert

It says "Prep Time 20 minutes" - but I beg to differ - it took most of the morning - but maybe that was because I had to improvise a bit.
It called out 25 gingersnaps crushed to make the crust and I didn't have gingersnaps.  I thought about making some, but it would have taken me all day if I did that, so I used a package of graham crackers.  I crushed them and then added a teaspoon of ginger, one of cinamon, and a quarter teaspoon of cloves and a quarter cup of sugar, and the prescribed 1/4 cup of butter that I pressed into the baking dish.  Baked for 10 minutes at 350.

Next layer:  16 oz cream cheese blended with 1/2 cup sugar, pumpkin, spices and two eggs.

Spread that layer evenly over the crust and bake for 30 minutes

Next layer:  2 packages of instant vanilla pudding mix, blended with 2 cups of cold milk and 1 cup of CoolWhip.  Spread over baked layer after it cools. The remainder of the CoolWhip is spread on top of the pudding layer.

It gave instructions for roasting pecans for the top - but I found these at Costco the other day, and chopped a cup of them instead.
Here is the finished dessert:

Definitely a "do again" dessert!