Pumpkin and peanut butter for a Halloween treat

While MT opted for a mummy-looking potato concoction for a Halloween-themed recipe this week (coming in Thursday’s paper), I found myself drawn to the ingredients of this “peanut butter pumpkin fudge,” which looks autumnal but not particularly Halloweenish. I confess I had an unsure reaction to it once I tasted the first sample, so it became pretty important to get the opinions of our newsroom taste testers.

They were positive, but a tad mixed.

“You hit it out of the park with this one,” reporter Bill O’Boyle said. “It’s good.”

“I’m not a fan of peanut butter because it tends to overpower flavors,” reporter Hannah Simerson said. “But I love sweet and salty things, and that really worked for me.”

Which is a good point in this tale to mention the salt in the recipe. It calls for a little in the fudge itself, with an optional sprinkle of sea salt on top as garnish. I did sprinkle a little fine sea salt on before putting it all in the freezer, but felt it could use more and started gently pressing a grain or three of coarse sea salt into the tops of many of the pieces before taking it into the newsroom. Those pieces not only had some extra saltiness, they could even have a bit of crunch, which segues nicely into the next comments.

“I thought it was good, ” page designer Ashley Bringmann said. “I liked the saltiness. I tasted a little pumpkin, but I thought it could use more.”

Page designer Lyndsay Bartos admitted up front not being a big fan of peanut butter, and felt it did overpower the concoction. She did offer one suggestion I think could work well. “It could use a crunchy topping, like crushed pretzels.”

“Or crumbled graham crackers,” Ashley chirped in.

I think crushed pretzels would work well because it would add both crunch and salt. It could even be folded into the fudge before freezing, or pressed in a bit before cutting into squares.

Reporter Margaret Roarty had no problem with the peanut butter because, as she noted, “I love peanut butter.” But she did agree with others that the pumpkin could be amped up a little, or the PB cut back a bit, to make it a truer pumpkin treat.

Right off the top, I had been concerned about the PB-to-pumpkin ratio, but I usually try to stick to a recipe the first time I make it and dabble with variations later. Two points on the peanut butter:

1) The recipe actually just calls for your preferred “nut butter,” even though the title has PB in it, so you could use almond butter, cashew butter, mixed nut butter or whatever you like.

2) Regular readers know MT & I stock Smuckers natural peanut butter, which as I’ve mentioned before, tends to have a stronger peanut flavor than other commercial brands (I use half the amount called for when I make the Emeril Lagasse pumpkin soup recipe). We had about half a cup of Smuckers handy that I used, but I bought a jar of Skippy’s natural for the rest of it.

One taste tester had a very different reaction than the rest. “It was very pumpkiny,” editor Roger DuPuis said. “That was the dominating flavor. I liked it.”

And reporter Jen Learn-Andes made an important point worth keeping in mind if you decide to try this recipe. “I thought it was good, I liked it. It wasn’t as sweet as other fudges; I would caution people about that.”

Which kind of brings up the old “is it fudge?” debate. I found it interesting that the website where I found this recipe actually puts the word in quotes, suggesting perhaps that they know some people will refuse to call this fudge at all. As I noted a bit at length in a story about divinity fudge, and mentioned more briefly when I made some no-cook peanut butter fudge, there is a school of thought that says it’s not fudge if the sugars aren’t heated enough to start crystallizing. This is just heated enough to get all the ingredients merging smoothly.

Which brings up my only tip: For me, the 2-hour minimum freezer time wasn’t enough. I left it in for nearly three and still thought it was a tad soft. Unlike many fudges that are cooked to the soft-ball stage on a candy thermometer, this probably wouldn’t hold up very well at room temperature, I took it to work in a tin with two ice packs under the fudge pieces.

Dobru chut!

Peanut Butter Pumpkin “Fudge” (tasty.co, Crystal Hatch)

2 cups nut butter

1 cup pumpkin puree

½ cup coconut oil

¼ cup maple syrup

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

½ teaspoon pumpkin pie spice, or ¼ teaspoon cinnamon and ¼ teaspoon nutmeg

¼ teaspoon flaky sea salt plus more for garnish

In a medium sauce pot over medium heat, combine nut butter, pumpkin, coconut oil, maple syrup, vanilla extract, pumpkin pie spice and salt. Stir until smooth.

Pour onto a parchment paper-lined 8-inch by 8-inch baking dish and smooth evenly.

Sprinkle with sea salt for garnish (optional). Cover and freeze for at least 2 hours, cut into squares and store in fridge. Serve chilled.