Halloween is the only time of the year when spooky happenings are sure to set the mood. From creepy carved pumpkins to ghoulish front yard decorations, nothing says Halloween like a bit of weirdness for a single evening.
Trick or treat and good to eat!
Carving the pumpkin for Halloween will often gift you with plenty of pumpkin seeds, but for this seasonal treat, you might want to have more of these on hand, but buying pumpkin seeds isn’t the goal here. What you want to do is buy at least 1lb of unroasted pumpkin seeds from your local whole food market. These seeds need to be raw and unroasted since this recipe will require pan roasting them to make a festive treat everyone will want to eat.
Pumpkin seeds are high in micronutrients and have healthy levels of potassium, iron, zinc, copper, and manganese. These seeds are 100{33fafff82620d55c01e7e54e5509f1f12e5413cbb2b32b1b762de9ae00e8563e} natural and help promote healthy skin and strong bones, but do you know what the real not-so-scary part is? The health effect also contributes to better sleep, reduces stress levels, and even helps to keep you feeling good. It’s no wonder that pumpkin seeds are a natural anti-depression remedy!
You can prepare a bunch of these seeds beforehand and make little trick or treat bags for the kiddos that come to your door on Halloween night. These candy-like pumpkin seeds aren’t just a satisfying treat, since they also go great as a topping for hearty soups or sprinkled onto salads. Here’s how you can make them in your home in a jiffy.
Also see: Making Pumpkin Pear Soup for Fall
Candied Pumpkin Seeds
Equipment
- Small pan
- Stovetop
- Cookie tray
Ingredients
- ¼ Tablespoon Cumin seeds
- 1 Cup Raw pumpkin seeds (shelled, cleaned, and rinsed)
- 2 Tablespoons Unsalted butter
- 1 Tablespoon Granulated sugar
- 1 Pinch Ground cinnamon, cayenne chili powder, and smoked paprika
- 1 Tablespoon Honey (your choice)
- Sea salt or smoked salt (to taste)
Instructions
- To start, you want to toast your cumin seeds in a small pan using medium heat. Toast them until they become light brown or when you can smell their aroma coming out. Now, these can be added to the mortar and ground up so they are medium course.
- Now you take your skillet and melt the butter over medium heat and then add your pumpkin seeds to get them all nicely coated. After this, you can add all of your spices including the ground cumin. Be careful when adding the salt, so only a pinch or two is needed here.
- Your seeds need to be stirred so all of the sugar and spices start to stick to each seed and are essentially coating them with flavor. This mixture is allowed to cook for a few minutes or until you start to hear the pumpkin seeds lightly popping from the heat. This means they are roasting and will get nice and crispy as a result.
- Don’t let your seeds burn so take them out before they get too brown. Turn off your stovetop and then add your honey for the last part of this recipe. The honey helps to caramelize all of the flavors onto each seed, giving them sweetness, a little bit of spicy kick, and plenty of crunchy texture.
- Now you can spread the finished seeds onto the cookie tray to cool off. You can now move on to the next batch to make as much as you like. Once you’ve tried this first batch, you can adjust the level of spices to make them more tailored to your personal taste. You can also experiment with other flavors that you enjoy more than what this recipe includes. The finished product should look similar to BBQ-flavored corn nuts except these are pumpkin seeds.
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