I'm in Sweden until Monday and I had planned a few more Halloween recipes to stick up on the blog, unfortunately the combination of loosing my power adaptor and lots of travelling meant that I didn't get round to actually posting them. Sweden doesn't really celebrate Halloween and it is seen mainly as an American holiday but seeing as I grew up with the tradition of carving pumpkins, I thought it was high time my Swedish friends got their carve on!
Sofie and I spent the day yesterday searching for the perfect pumpkins to bring over to her little cousins who were very excited at the idea of gutting the pumpkins! In fairness to Sweden they have a great selection of pumpkins on offer and it's not all the generic ones we get in the supermarket in Ireland.
After a lot of searching and mini breakdown from Sofie, we finally found two big fat orange pumpkins! It was lots of fun carving the pumpkins with Niklas and Jonas but my favourite part of the whole process is making these delicious toasted seeds!
Spicy Pumpkin Seeds
These seeds are my perfect little alloween snack and they are far more healthy than your average Halloween treats! Try experimenting with flavours, I have yet to make a sweet version of these but I'm pretty sure they would work good too.
Serves about 4 people as a snack
The seeds of 2 pumpkins
3 tablespoons of melted butter
2 teaspoons of chilli powder
1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper
2 teaspoons of sea salt
Remove the seeds from the pumpkin, place in a colander and rinse with water until they are clean.
Shake off any excess water and place the seeds on a dry tea towel and pat dry.
Place the seeds in a large roasting tray and pour over the melted butter.
Sprinkle the seeds with the chilli powder, cayenne pepper and sea salt.
Toss the seeds until they are all thoroughly coated.
Place in the oven to toast for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool, though to be honest sometimes they taste the best straight out of the oven! Just watch out for burned fingers!
