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It’s that time of the year and I’m feeling decidedly unchristmassy. Perhaps it’s the terror of presents left unpurchased, perhaps it’s the missing tree and decorations, perhaps… well screw it. Christmas just skipped me this year.

Times like these you need to bake. Something sciencey would be nice, but I’ll settle for anything. A gingerbread house would be amazing… A gingerbread LAB would be even better! What exactly would that entail, I wonder? Stay tuned, maybe I’ll make one and find out.

At the supermarket today I bought a litre of long life milk and another of long life custard, Sexy Man’s contribution to a Christmas hamper for the homeless or some such.

After a jubilent sms from the checkout to tell him the good news, I learned he had already bought it himself. Now we have a litre of custard that we’ll never use.

But I’m not the kinda girl to waste food, so my solution is to bake with it. Custard recipes ranged from “custard on banana” to tiramisu… and then I found this.

It’s custard baked inside a whole pumpkin. YUM! Well, actually I’ve never had baked pumpkin with custard before, but I like each item individually. Perhaps together there will be a synergy of flavours!!!

The recipe descibes how to MAKE the custard, but seeing as I have a whopping 1 L already I’m just gonna cram it in and put it in the oven, possibly with a stick of cinnamon. Can I somehow make this concoction sciencey? Time will tell. I may blog the results.

I’m really excited about the recipe because it said you could keep the pumpkin seeds you dig out from the centre and roast them with some spices. Holy shizz, how have I never thought of this? I’ve been throwing ’em out THIS WHOLE TIME, when they were a source of that holy grail of minerals, iron.

As a vegetarian, iron is kinda a big deal. I had an iron test recently and it came out borderline low. Like, it’s supposed to be between 15 and 200, and I was 15. But like a told the nurse who tried to put me on supplements, “it’s borderline.” We make borders for a reason, you know, If I was 14 I’d accept that I have low iron, but I was 15. I made the grade. I passed goddammit.

Still any source of iron is a cause for celebration. I will be celebrating with pumpkin seeds and orange juice.

Seriously though, that baked pumpkin looks badass, I can’t tear my eyes from it. Are you baking for Christmas? If not, how do you get into the Santa spirit, or has it eluded you too?