Pumpkin Apple Purée Recipe

This felt like a seasonally topical and easy-to-make baby food purée recipe. I actually ended up making it because I had a leftover can of pumpkin and jar of applesauce after some Thanksgiving baking.

pumpkin apple baby food purée

I have an easier, straight-out-of-the-can recipe, which basically just requires stirring, and an easy but slightly more involved recipe that involves baking/cooking pumpkins and apples.

The quickest and easier first.


Do the Can-Can!

Depiction of the can-can by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1895

INGREDIENTS

• One 15 ounce can pumpkin
• 1 cup unsweetened applesauce
• Optional spices:
• cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves

INSTRUCTIONS

Mix pumpkin and applesauce together in a bowl.

Add as much spice, if any, that you want. No spices are fine, but I like to add something so baby gets used to different flavors. I like a lot of cinnamon and ended up doing about 1–2 teaspoons of cinnamon and ½ teaspoon of pumpkin spice, which contains cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves. But I recommend tasting it yourself and deciding what combination of spices you like.

Serve up whatever amount is appropriate for your baby's age and store the rest. I like to make a fairly large amount of baby food and freeze the rest in ice cube trays.

It's convenient since each cube is one ounce of food. You just take out however much you need the night before and let it thaw in the refrigerator until it's yum-yum time.

Ice cube tray tip: If you're having trouble getting the frozen cubes out of the tray, run warm water along the back for a few seconds. Then they'll pop right out (thanks for teaching me that trick, Dad).


Bake It 'Til You Make It

INGREDIENTS

• 2 pumpkins*
• 3 Gala apples
• Optional spices:
• cinnamon, nutmeg, giner, cloves

*The pumpkins I used were the smaller ones you can get at a grocery store that are intended for cooking. Mine were roughly 5 x 5 x 5 inches. I had originally gotten them as my babies' pumpkins for Halloween and painted on them with water soluble acrylic paint instead of carving them.

Winry and Henry with their Halloween pumpkins. More baby Halloween details here.

INSTRUCTIONS

Set oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Cut pumpkins in half and remove the stem, pulp and seeds. Set the seeds aside to bake them (I recommend keeping them in for less time than the recipe calls for and checking on them periodically so that they don't burn).

Place the pumpkin halves face down on a baking sheet and cover with foil. Bake for about 1-½ hours or until it is completely soft and tender.

Meanwhile, rinse your apples. Then core and cut them into small pieces (roughly half inch cubes). You can peel the skins if you want. I find that Gala apple skins get plenty soft and baby-eatable after being cooked and puréed, so I don't bother removing them.

Put the apples in a large sauté pan. Fill pan with water until it about halfway covers the apples pieces. Then set the stove to medium-low heat and let simmer until most or all of the liquid has evaporated.

Soft and tender apples

Once the pumpkin and apples are finished baking/cooking, remove pumpkin from its skin. You can use a spoon to scoop it out, but mine was cooked long enough that it practically fell out of the skin on its own.

Add all of the pumpkin and apple pieces into a food processor and blend until desired consistency. You can add whole milk, formula or breast milk while blending if needed—just make sure not to use whole milk until baby is at least one-year-old.

Now follow the instructions under the Can-can section.

Done.