A-a-anything from the trolley?

Yes!
Pumpkin pasties, please!

Harry Potter fans are well aware that yesterday, July 31, was Harry's birthday - a day I usually celebrate by blogging about one of the HP books. I decided to add to the festivities this year by preparing a favorite food of Harry and friends. I chose pumpkin pasties because we had the ingredients on hand. The pasties were dessert following our early Lammas feast.

I did not actually use pumpkin, but rather a squash that looked like this

Received in this week's CSA pick up

Inside the squash is very light green, almost white, rather than orange. I cut it into pieces and roasted it until it was soft, then pureed. Once I added the spices (way more than the recipe calls for) it didn't matter that it wasn't pumpkin.

This was rather time-consuming, as I had to made the pumpkin custard filling and the pastry dough (the recipe said store bought pie crust pastry could be used - I think not!). Neither the filling or the crust was really that difficult to prepare but cooking time was quite long as the filling had to bake first, then was placed into the pastry, and then everything went back to the oven again. The recipe also said not to bake for more than 10 minutes once the shells were filled. I had to bake for about 25 minutes before I saw any kind of crustiness that I was satisfied with.

These were sweet and creamy - like single-serving pumpkin pies. We had some vanilla ice-cream with butterscotch chips along with it.

Yum!