Twice Baked Pumpkin

Ya know, I've never been that fussed on pumpkin. I love butternut pumpkin in soup, but the usual big grey pumpkin leaves me cold. But there are 4 ways that I actually quite like it - which is good, cos it's such a handy GAPS vegetable.


The first is in bread or cake - I've already posted recipes for Cashew Bread and Coconut Almond bread, which both have pumpkin as an optional ingredient.


The other 3 are "Twice baked pumpkin".


Cut your pumpkin into pieces, scrape out the seeds and place spaced out on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Bake for about an hour at 175C, till a knife goes through easily. Scrape the flesh away from the skin and put into a food processor with a little salt and some ghee. Process till smooth.


1. With feta (not GAPS friendly, or at least not till later stages):


Put 1/2 of the pumpkin into a baking dish. Sprinkle a generous layer of feta on top (1/2 to 1 block). Pour on the rest of the pumpkin. Grate some tasty cheddar cheese and mix with breadcrumbs or ground almonds. Sprinkle on top. Put back in the oven for about 15 minutes till the cheese is nicely browned.


2. With peanut butter


A chance comment from a client about putting peanut butter into pumpkin pie lead to this variation. When you add the ghee and salt to the food processor, also add a couple of large spoonfuls of peanut butter - preferably either Reilly's or your own homemade. Zizz till smooth, pour into a baking dish and bake for about 15 mins. It's amazing the difference this makes to the taste.


3. Souffle.


This version comes from Emma on the GAPS Australasia Support Group. She makes it with butternut squash and calls it Pumpkin Pie. Her version is a sweetish breakfast dish. Make the peanut butter version above but also beat in 6 eggs that have been whisked up in a separate bowl. Bake for 15 minutes or so till firm and lightly browned. Serve as a vegetable side dish. Or for breakfast or dessert, top with shredded coconut, ground up nuts or berries.


Versions 2 or 3 can be part of our GAPS Xmas Feast.

Coconut almond bread

A few of you that came to my GAPS workshop last week wanted the recipe for the pumpkin bread, and I discovered I hadn't put it on the blog yet. So here it is!


The basic almond bread recipe in "Gut and Psychology Syndrome" contains just ground almonds, eggs and fat of some kind (eg butter, ghee, duck fat or coconut oil). In "Breaking The Vicious Cycle" Lois Lang's Luscious Bread also contains dry curd cottage cheese, salt and baking soda.


I developed this combination of Lois Lang's bread with the basic coconut flour bread recipe. It contains baking soda, but to be 100% GAPS just leave that out. The variation I made last week used coconut oil for the fat and pumpkin for moisture to make it dairy free. It stays moist in the fridge for a few days.

• 5 eggs
• 4 oz melted butter (or ghee, coconut oil, duck fat, palm oil)
• 1 cup cottage cheese, yoghurt, yoghurt “cheese”, kefir, kefir cheese OR 1 cup mashed pumpkin 
• 1 heaped teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 2 ½ cups ground almonds (or other nut flour)
• ½ cup coconut flour, sifted

Preheat oven to 175C (350F). Line a loaf tin with baking paper. Beat the first 5 ingredients together. Mix the flours together and beat into the wet ingredients. Spoon into tin and smooth the top. Bake till golden, about 45 minutes.


Variation: Zucchini bread


Replace the cottage cheese or pumpkin with 1.5 cups grated zucchini. Stir this in when you mix the wet and dry together.

Easter Spicy Buns

These gluten-free, starch-free buns don't have the texture of hot cross buns, but they're still a tasty treat for Easter. They can also be made casein-free.

·         1 cup ground almonds

·         ½ cup coconut flour

·         ½ tsp baking soda

·         1 heaped tsp mixed spice

·         ½ cup sultanas, raisins or currants

·         2-3 tsp grated orange rind

·         3 eggs

·         75gm melted butter or coconut oil

·         2-3 Tbs honey

·         ½ tsp sea salt

·         ½ cup yoghurt OR mashed, cooked pumpkin (prepared earlier) OR finely diced feijoa (I haven't tested these, but mashed banana or grated apple should work fine too)

Preheat the oven to 175C. Set butter or oil melting over a low heat, and if your honey is solid, add that to the pan as well. Mix together the flours, baking soda and spice in a large bowl. Stir in the dried fruit and rind. Beat together the eggs, melted butter, honey and sea salt in a small food processor.

If you’re using feijoa, chop the ends off, peel them and dice them. If you’re using pumpkin, it needs to be pre-cooked, mashed and cooled.

Add the yoghurt, feijoa or pumpkin to the wet mix and beat. The pumpkin needs to be well mixed in, but the feijoa can be still in tiny pieces.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix well. If the mix is too wet, add a little extra flour. Leave to sit while you grease the muffin tins. Spoon in the mix and cook for 15-20 mins. Serve hot, with butter or ghee if you tolerate it. Makes 8-10 std muffins or about 24 mini ones (which need less cooking time).

Cashew Bread

I first came across Cashew Bread in Eat Well Feel Well, a book of SCD recipes by Kendall Conrad. While it was delicious, it wasn’t quite what we were looking for at the time. It was a couple of years before I came back to the idea, when I wanted to develop a GAPS friendly bread for those who were having problems with almond flour.

This version has a few changes from the original:

1. I found a version of it at hellokitchen.blogspot.com/2007/11/cashew-coconut-bread.html which substituted 1 cup of coconut flour for some of the cashews. This seems to make the bread a bit more stable. If you don’t or can’t have coconut flour, use all cashews.

2. For those who can’t have dairy, I substituted mashed pumpkin for the SCD yoghurt in the original recipe.

3. The original recipe had 1 cup apple juice. To reduce the sugar content, I replaced that with water plus a little extra apple cider vinegar. The pumpkin gives it enough sweetness.

These three changes make the mix a little drier, so you may need to add a little extra water.

OK, so I have to confess, it does have baking soda which isn’t GAPS friendly. I haven’t tested it without baking soda yet but will let you know when I do. (If you try it before me, post a comment letting me know how it goes.) It is a dense loaf anyway, so I think it will come out pretty much the same.

Pumpkin cashew bread

Makes 2 loaves

• 6 large eggs, separated
• 1 tsp sea or Himalayan salt
• 5 cups raw unsalted cashews
• 1 cup coconut flour (or an extra cup cashews)
• 1.5 tsp baking soda
• 2 cups cooked, mashed pumpkin (or SCD yoghurt)
• 2 Tbs apple cider vinegar
• 1 cup water
• Extra water if needed

Preheat oven to 300F / 150C. Line loaf pans with baking paper - either two approx 14cm x 23cm or three smaller ones.
Separate the eggs, putting the whites into a large bowl and the yolks into a smaller one. Using an electric mixer, beat the eggs whites with the salt until stiff peaks form. Set aside.
Using a food processor, grind the cashews till they are in small pieces. Add the coconut flour and baking soda and process till the cashews are as fine as you can get them. If a paste starts to form on the sides, stop now.
With a whisk or fork blend the egg yolks, pumpkin, water, and vinegar. Add to the ingredients in the food processor and mix thoroughly. If necessary, add a little extra water to blend it all together to a thick paste.
Take out the blade, and add a little of the egg white mix to the food processor. Mix it in with a fork. Add the mixture to the egg white bowl and fold into the egg whites using a metal spoon. Mix just until you no longer see clumps of egg white, trying not to overmix.
Spoon into prepared pans and bake for 1hr-1hr 20min, or until a skewer comes out clean. Cool in pans on a rack for about 15 mins, then slide the loaves onto the racks to complete cooling. Keeps in the fridge for a few days, or can be frozen.