#31 Days - Pumpkin & Cream Cheese Candy

  
                  

This month's challenge recipe is also an adaptation of something that is one of my husband's favorites, "Potato Candy".

There's a funny story about that.  When my husband and I first met, I was talking to his mother on the phone one day and she gave me a recipe for potato candy, saying that it was one of the few sweet things he enjoyed, and that he would love me forever.  She told me "1/2 c of mashed potato and 1/2 c butter, followed by about 4 c of powdered sugar.

So, I dutifully mixed it up and took it, still in the bowl, to 'present' it.  I made Chris close his eyes and spoon fed him a little bit.  He smiled, opened his eyes, looked up at me and asked, "What is it?"  I replied that I had gotten the recipe for his favorite, Potato Candy, from his mother.  He asked me what happened to the peanut butter.  What peanut butter?  Apparently she left that part out.

When thinking of something different to do for this challenge, that could use something from the garden, I came up with the idea of substituting pumpkin for the potato, and cream cheese for the peanut butter.

The ingredients I used were:

1/2 c. pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
1/2 c. butter at room temperature
cinnamon to taste
ground cloves to taste
4+ c. powdered sugar

Cream together the pumpkin, butter and spices.  Add powdered sugar one cup at a time.  The end result should be of a soft, dry-ish fondant consistency, pliable but not sticky.

Line a cookie sheet with plastic wrap.  Spread and press out the mixture onto the plastic wrap into a large rectangle.  (I used plastic wrap wrapped around the fingers of one hand.)

Filling:
8 oz. soft or room-temperature plain cream cheese
nutmeg to taste
1 T. milk (if you use a bar of cream cheese)

Mix together well, and spread over the pumpkin mixture, leaving a little bare pumpkin on the two long sides of the cookie sheet for sealing.  

Lift up the plastic wrap on one side, wrapping the pumpkin mix over the cream cheese, into a jelly roll.  Refrigerate until firm.  Cut into slices.  Enjoy.

The Pumpkin Candy tastes great but is very, very sweet.

My pictures are not the greatest this month.  I think I should have used even more powdered sugar than I did to take away some of the moisture in the pumpkin mix.  And next time I will use the cream cheese that comes in a tub rather than what comes in the bar.  The roll should have held its shape a little better than it did.

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The October Daily Challenge prompt for today (Thursday, 10 October, 2013) is:

Pick 3 random blogs (from the challenge link-up), describe their blog, and tell us what you think of it!  Share a snippet/screen capture of their blog too.

Gypsy Shar (Daily Ramblings from a Free Spirit) - Shar is a lovely young woman with both outer and inner beauty.  She offers great advice to help other people in many facets of life and is refreshingly straight-forward about her beliefs, while honoring the beliefs of others.  (All pictures are copywrighted and there was not enough time to secure her permission to use one of them, but I'd be more than happy to edit this post at a later date and add one.)

Maddie Rose is relatively new to blogging.  She is participating in several blogging challenges at this time and has posted some yummy-looking recipes.  The fact that she would try to go without sugar for a day for the sake of her blog shows a great deal of strength; I don't think I could do it. :O)  (The graphic above is a link to her blog.

The Glamourous Guide - Erica, has a quote on her Facebook page from Audrey Hepburn - "Happy girls are the prettiest," which I absolutely ADORE.  Her blog has a very clean design and she covers a variety of topics.  Quite a bit is fashion related, as she is a Glambassador for Glamour Magazine.  How cool is that?