There was a recipe for Pumpkin Snack Cake in the most recent issue of Cook's Country. I wanted to try it out using a fresh pie pumpkin rather than canned purée. This, of course, meant pumpkin seeds. The Kidlet voted for pizza flavour this time, so we gave that one a try. I think it would've been nice with a bit of tomato powder as the author suggested, but they still came out nice even without it. The Parmesan did have a tendency to clump together though. I think maybe the recipe was written for what TF and I call "Parmesan sand" and not fresh grated Parmesan. It still came out tasty despite the clumping issue though, so I don't think it was a problem in the end.

Pizza Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Slightly adapted from Wholefully

Ingredients

• 1/2 c. pumpkin seeds
• 1 tsp. olive oil
• 1 (generous) Tbsp. grated Parmesan
• 1/2 tsp. lightly dried basil¹
• 1/2 tsp. dried oregano
• 1/4 tsp. coarse sea salt
• 1/4 tsp. tomato powder (optional)
• 1/8 tsp. garlic powder

Directions

1. Toss pumpkin seeds with olive oil.
2. Add remaining ingredients and mix to coat.
3. Spread coated seeds in a single layer on a baking sheet. (Line the baking sheet with parchment paper for easier clean-up.)
4. Bake at 150°C (300°F) for 30 minutes, checking seeds about halfway through baking to see if they need to be flipped or turned.

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Variations

Vegan

Ingredients

• 1/2 c. pumpkin seeds
• 1 tsp. olive oil
• 1 Tbsp. nutritional yeast
• 1/2 tsp. lightly dried basil¹
• 1/2 tsp. dried oregano
• 1/4 tsp. coarse sea salt
• 1/4 tsp. tomato powder (optional)
• 1/8 tsp. garlic powder

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¹ I don't generally recommend or keep fully dried basil on hand as it loses most of its flavour and pretty rapidly approaches the taste of hay instead. Dried would probably be fine here (as long as it hasn't been sitting around for too long), but I didn't want to go out and buy dried basil just for this. I had some "lightly dried" basil in the fridge, which tends to retain a lot more of the fresh basil flavour than its fully dried counterpart, and opted to use that instead. ^Back