This recipe for cinnamon & sugar roasted pumpkin seeds is a great way of using up all the seeds that most people usually bin when they carve Halloween pumpkin, make pumpkin butter or try to bottle or can pumpkins.

I’ve used the whole pumpkin seeds (with shells) in this recipe. They are perfectly safe to eat as they are, although most of us think that pumpkin seeds are green. And yes, they are green if you shell them, but that’s for another blog post and another time!

I’ve used slightly different approach to roasting these seeds, unlike in the honey roasted sunflower seeds recipe, but you could of course use various sugar syrups, honey or agave syrup in this recipe too.

PIN TO KEEP FOR LATER

If you are not sure what to use pumpkin seeds for, these make a great sweet snack, but also a great topping for yogurt, puddings or breakfast porridge. You can also add them to breakfast oat’s bars or cakes.

And of course, if you pack them in to pretty jam jars with fancy ribbon and a gift tag, they could make a great little present for your friends and family.

Ingredients you will need

1 cup pumpkin seeds – not shelled (alternatively use shop bought green shelled pumpkin seeds if you prefer)

1 tbs butter or coconut oil/butter

2 tbs brown sugar – or light brown sugar (for a lighter flavour)

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon (or you can use pumpkin pie spice mix if you like)

pinch of salt

pinch of finely milled black pepper

OTHER MIXED SPICES YOU CAN USE WITH THIS RECIPE

How to prepare your pumpkin seeds for roasting

Once you remove the seeds with the pumpkin pulp/fibre you need to rinse the seeds in water to make sure that you remove all the pumpkin fibre. Use a large colander to rinse the seeds, until you end up with just white pumpkin seeds. Leave the seeds to dry on a kitchen paper towel.

How to roast pumpkin seeds at home

Preheat the oven to 325 F or about 160C (medium heat oven)

Prepare a clean large baking tray and line it with a baking parchment (this will make washing up and cleaning that much easier!)

Mix all the spices, sugar, pepper and salt in one bowl.

Place the butter in a suitable bowl and either melt in the oven or microwave (for few seconds).

Add the pumpkin seeds to the butter making sure the seeds coat evenly.

Add the sugar & spices mix and move about so that the buttered pumpkin seeds stick to the sugar.

Space out on the tray and place in the middle shelf.

Bake for about 5 minutes, then take out, stir and place back.

Bake for further 3-5 minutes, but keep watching the seeds so that they don’t burn. If they need a bit more add another 3 minutes, but watch them very carefully.

When they are done, they will be darker in colour, all sugar will be melted and crystalised on the top and they will look crunchy and shiny.

Leave to cool down on the cooling rack (you can slide out the baking parchment from the tray to make sure the seeds cool down quicker)

How to store roasted pumpkin seeds

Because we are adding sugar, you need to make sure that you store your pumpkin seeds in an air tight container – either jam jar or plastic tub with a sealed lid.

If the pumpkin seeds come into contact with a humidity for too long (e.g. you leave them in the bowl on the table for a long time), the sugar will melt and they will become sticky.

If you roasted your pumpkin seeds without the sugar, you could also freeze them and keep them for up to 12 months or keep them in the fridge for 2-3 months.

How long do pumpkin seeds last ?

Because we’ve preserved our pumpkin seeds with sugar and by baking them, they will have a good shelf life. But because we’ve used fresh butter, we’ll need to keep them somewhere cool and out of the direct sunlinght.

Use within a few weeks or a maximum of 4 weeks (because of all the butter). Shop-bought pumpkin seeds (not roasted) last longer – about 3 months. They will not go bad per se, but they might become rancid (bitter) when you taste them if you keep them for too long.