5 Ingredients or Fewer

Pumpkin Dessert

April 28, 2014
5
1 Ratings
  • Serves 6-8
Author Notes

Traditional Turkish dessert, made by only 4 simple ingredients. Obviously the walnuts makes the finishing touch to the dish and gives the irresistible taste. It takes many trials to reach perfect pumpkin dessert like our ancestors. Recipe serves for 6-8 people, but usually it finishes in the kitchen... —Osman K. Pekin

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Ingredients
  • 2 pounds Pumpkin, peeled and chunked.
  • 2 cups Granulated Sugar
  • 3 pieces Whole Cloves
  • 1.5 cups Halved Walnuts
Directions
  1. Cut whole pumpkin into wedges and trim off the skin. Clean all the seeds and make sure you have smooth pumpkin wedges.
  2. Depending on their size cut the pumpkin wedges into 2-3 pieces (around 3-4 inches long). Give them a good wash under cold water. Dry them fully with a paper towel.
  3. Put pumpkin chunks into a heavy and large sauce pot. Cover the pumpkin with sugar and put the whole cloves. If the pumpkins are too sweet use 1.5 cup of sugar instead of 2 cups. Put the lid on and leave over night in a room temperature (for 12 hours). This will allow pumpkins to release the water inside them and we will not be putting additional water while cooking.
  4. Cook the pumpkins over medium heat for 2.5-3 hours. (Until the pumpkins soften but not mushy.) In the last 30 to 45 minutes open the lid so sugar and the water become syrupy. After cooked cool for 4-5 hours. It can be kept in the refrigerator up to a week.
  5. This is the important part, before serving in pestle and mortar crush walnuts in to small chunks. Place the pumpkins on a service platter and don't forget to put the syrup on top as well. From a hight crumble walnut pieces and Bon Appétit.
  6. Also you can serve with good quality vanilla ice-cream, preferably not very sweet.

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1 Review

dcadence December 24, 2020
Absolutely delicious and so easy. I actually had pre steamed a bunch of pumpkin thinking I was going to make something else, then stumbled on this recipe. I just added the sugar to the already cooked pumpkin, some water and started it cooking again. It's so fragrant and sweet and I can't wait to present it to my XMAS Eve dinner guests with some ice cream on the side. I couldn't get mine to stay in chunks-probably bc of the double cooking, so I'm going to serve it via an ice cream scoop and make little pumpkin spheres with their syrup. I think it'll be a striking and festive presentation which I love when a dish is so easy.