Sweet and Spicy Pumpkin Seeds

On Wednesday night, I got together with a couple of pals to carve pumpkins. I arrived armed with sharp knives, some Vosges bacon chocolate and a yummy mixture of sugar and spice to make those pumpkin seeds nice.

As the ladies carved, I put myself in charge of pulling the seeds out of the pumpkin guts. By the way, I brought all of the pumpkin guts home and pureed it for use on Sunday - more on that this weekend!

Sugar and Spice Mix

- 5 Tablespoons sugar

- 1/4 Teaspoon salt

- 1/4 Teaspoon ground cumin

- 1/4 Teaspoon ground cinnamon

-1/4 Teaspoon ground ginger

- 1/4 Teaspoon cayenne pepper

More after the jump...

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Rinse the seeds of any clingy pumpkin flesh, and dry the seeds as well as possible. I used paper towels, but it would have been much easier if I had a salad spinner for the job.

Cover a cookie sheet with a piece of parchment paper. Lay the pumpkin seeds in a single layer on the parchment and spray the seeds with cooking spray.

Sprinkle the sugar and spice mixture liberally over the seeds and pop the cookie sheet into the oven. If you have enough seeds to warrant 2 cookie sheets, you'll want to switch racks in the middle of the cook time.

The seeds take about 15 to 17 minutes. But keep an eye on them! Ok, so the girls were nice enough not to sell me out to Twitter at the time, but I'll confess here. Watch your pumpkin seeds. Do not abandon them to drink wine and each chocolate. Or you will get this:

Ewww. Oh well, it happens to the best of us.

With the second batch, I set the oven timer for 10 minutes. At the 10 minute mark, I jiggled the seeds around on the cookie sheet, and let them go for another 6ish.

Perfection!

Important note! A few of these shots, like the one below, were taken by Kristin Cioffi, one of our talented pumpkin carvers. Check out her work, here.