Sweet and Savory Baked Pumpkin Seeds

Taste the Fall! Sweet and Savory Baked Pumpkin Seeds!

Nothing else quite makes you feel like fall has arrived until the leaves begin to turn color, and you find yourself surrounded by perfect, big, round, hard, pumpkins! I found myself in the presence of many pumpkins recently, and after carving mine up in good company, I knew I didn’t want the seeds to go to waste so I decided to set my mind to developing a baked pumpkin seed recipe. There were so many seeds, that I decided that making both a sweet and a savory recipe would be a good idea. I had about two cups of seeds to work with, so I divided up the seeds and here’s what I came up with!

Honey Brown Sugar Baked Pumpkin Seeds:

1 cup pumpkin seeds

About 4 tbsp honey

Brown sugar

-Preheat oven to 300 degrees F

-Rinse seeds of all the gooey orange fibers, and lay out to dry

-Once dry, mix the seeds and honey in a bowl

-Spread over a baking sheet – do not spread on tinfoil etc., honey will stick!

-Place in oven, and after 30 minutes remove to sprinkle desired amount of brown sugar – overcooking brown sugar can result in bitterness!

-Place back in oven, and bake for about anther 30 minutes

I recommend taste-testing seeds sporadically, because everyone prefers a different level of crunch to their seeds.

Sriracha Baked Pumpkin Seeds:

3 tbsp olive oil

Sriracha – amount depends on spice level desired

1 tbsp seasoned salt

½ tsp pepper

1 tsp cayenne

-Preheat oven to 300 degrees F

-Rinse seeds of all the gooey orange fibers, and lay out to dry

-Once dry, mix the seeds and olive oil in a bowl

-Mix in seasoned salt, pepper, and cayenne, and I also added a couple generous squirts of Sriracha

-Spread over a baking sheet

-Bake for about 1 hour – Again, I recommend taste-testing seeds on occasion to reach desired level of crunch

These recipes are just meant to inspire different ways of flavoring pumpkin seeds, and don’t need to be strictly followed. Have fun with it and enjoy!

-Ianna