Sep 19

Sep 19 5 Breakfast Recipes to Satisfy Your Pumpkin Cravings

Homemade Pumpkin Breakfast

Does the arrival of crisp mornings and red leaves peeping through on the trees make your heart sing? Welcome fellow Fall lover. How could you not enjoy a season with such delicious Fall flavors? While the pumpkin craze is seeping into stores earlier each year, I’d argue it’s best to wait until mid-September to lean fully into Fall. As Jim Elliot encourages, “Wherever you are, be all there!” Rushing to pumpkin recipes before they are even ripe on the vine seems a bit ridiculous.

But once I see those first local pumpkins freshly harvested, and available for sale at the Farmer’s Market, it’s time! Time for pumpkin from breakfast to happy hour. Give me a pumpkin and before you know it it will be cooked and turned into pumpkin puree and I will find a way to use it all day long. Among our favorites at The Wandering Hearth: pumpkin lattes, baked pumpkin french toast, roasted pumpkin soup, pumpkin cake, even Pumpkin Spice White Russian cocktails.

Skip the artificial pumpkin spice craze in your local grocery store. They lean heavily into the “spice” with sugar and food coloring and often have little real pumpkin in them. Below I offer you easy, delicious alternatives! These five healthy, real ingredient recipes that celebrate everyone’s favorite autumn squash.

5 Breakfast Recipes

Spiced Pumpkin Parfait | Not only is this recipe as easy as stirring yogurt and pumpkin puree together, it is a great way to use that awkward amount of leftover canned pumpkin that didn’t make it into your pumpkin cake or pie recipe. Pro tip: Costco has a low-sugar pumpkin and flax seed granola that pairs nicely with this easy weekday breakfast.
Pumpkin Bread | This recipe tastes like Starbucks pumpkin bread met the Trader Joe’s pumpkin bread mix and they had the most delicious baby ever. Mix in dried cranberries and pecans to make a hearty breakfast loaf. Or swap those for chocolate chips and a special treart. Or skip the add ins and enjoy a pumpkin bread that will give Starbucks a run for its money!
Pumpkin Pecan Baked French Toast | You can mix the up the night before if you’d like. We’ve been making this for friends and family for quite some time now and each year it is requested again. Pro tip: use a hearty, multi-grain bread that is a few days old (stale is ok!). And if you really like the “spice” part of pumpkin spice, sprinkle some extra pie spice on top.
Steel Cut Oats with Pumpkin and Pecans | This recipe uses the Instant Pot to whip up some delicious and heart healthy steel cut oats in the fraction of the time. See the notes on this recipe for how to make pumpkin pecan oats, and another fall favorite: cranberry apple.
Bri McKoy’s Pumpkin Honey Simple Syrup for Pumpkin Spice Lattes | This honey simple syrup is no joke and I’ve included it here for its original intent of being used in coffee for pumpkin spice coffee or lattes. Or, stir into a white sangria for a crisp fall cocktail hour. But you can also use it to make a pumpkin vinaigrette (use the salad dressing recipe in this link as a base and add 1 TBS of the pumpkin honey simple syrup). Drizzle over a spinach salad with roasted butternut squash, spiced pecans and dried cherries.