I’ve had a wee little pumpkin sitting in my kitchen since Thanksgiving, which is when I bought it with the intention of turning it into a delicious pie. Since my family decided to go to a Hungarian restaurant that weekend, instead of enjoying a traditional meal together, plans to bake a Pumpkin pie from scratch got put on the back burner. When we had family friends over for dinner last week, I decided it was finally time to cook up that cute little pumpkin. To make a pumpkin pie from scratch, first you have to make the puree – which entails baking the pumpkin until soft, before scooping it out into a food processor etc. Long story short, I ended up with about one cup of extra organic homemade puree that I wasn’t going to just throw out! So what to make? Why, Pumpkin and Havarti Biscuits of course…

What You Need:

2 cups all-purpose flour (I used half Spelt flour)

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tbsp granulated sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup cold unsalted butter

1 1/4 cups Havarti cut into chunks

1/4 cup milk (*please note that this recipe was adapted from a cheese biscuit recipe. The original calls for 3/4 cup of milk, but since I’m adding in a puree, I cut down to approx 1/4. Add the milk in slowly to see how much you need, making sure not to make it too wet)

1 cup unspiced pumpkin puree

What To Do:

Preheat the oven to 450 F (230 C)

In a large bowl, or in a food processor, mix together the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Cut in the butter with a pastry blender (or by running the processor) until the mixture looks like coarse cornmeal. If you’re using a processor, transfer mixture to a bowl. By hand, stir in the cheese and toss to combine (since I used Havarti for this recipe, I added to the processor and gave it a quick blend to get the chunks nice and small). In the bowl, add the puree and the milk, and stir until it forms a soft dough. Dump out onto a lightly floured surface and knead by hand 10 or 12 times. Break off small pieces of the dough to form a ball in the palm of your hand, place on an ungreased baking sheet and gently press down to form rounds (approx 1/2 inch high 2 inches across). Bake for 12-14 minutes, until the biscuits are lightly browned and nicely puffed.

Makes approx 8-10 biscuits.

ps. These were sooo tasty fresh out of the oven with some extra butter spread on them. They were also great with my eggs in the morning, and perfect for an afternoon mini sandwich! In the picture above, I enjoyed them with pear jelly, brie cheese, prosciutto and some coriander – delish!