Sweet and Spicy Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

I have one last Halloween idea to share. If you are like my boss who doesn't let his kids carve their pumpkins until the day before Halloween (supposedly to avoid bugs and mold), you can still plan to make these roasted pumpkin seeds. I'm fairly certain I've done roasted pumpkin seeds before but I don't think they were very good (or I would have remembered...). This recipe is the tops. I roasted the seeds out of two pumpkins and ate half of them on Sunday. My jaw still hurts from that endeavor.

The hardest part of roasting pumpkin seeds is cleaning the seeds off of pumpkin gunk. When carving my pumpkins I usually have a garbage bowl and a colander over a bowl for the seeds. I find it easiest to clean the seeds in the sink under running water.

I opted to dry the seeds off a little before mixing them in a mixture of egg white, sugar, sea salt and cayenne pepper. The second time around I baked them for almost twice as long as the recipe suggested and ended up with really crunchy and caramelized pumpkin seeds. Majorly recommended. 

Besides just eating these by the handful, I've also thrown these into a lunch salad and on top of a Sweet Potato Soup with Goat Cheese.

But my favorite way to eat these is on top of an ice cream Sunday. If you dig the salty/sweet line, this is your Sunday: Vanilla Ice Cream + warm Bittersweet Chocolate Fudge Sauce + Marshmallow Fluff + chopped Walnuts + Sweet & Salty Roasted Pumpkin Seeds. It's the bomb diggity. 

Sweet & Spicy Pumpkin Seeds

Adapted from 101 Cookbooks

• 1 cup pumpkin seeds, cleaned
• 1 egg white
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper, ground
• 1/2 tsp sea salt

Preheat oven to 375

Place your pumpkin seeds in a bowl and add just enough egg white to coat. In a small bowl combine the sugar, cayenne pepper and salt. Add the sugar mixture to the pumpkin seeds and toss to combine. Place the seeds in a single layer on a cookie sheet fitted with a silpat or parchment paper. Bake for 12-20 minutes until golden. To really get a nice color, you may want to bump your oven temp to 425 for the last 5 minutes. When you pull them out of the oven, sprinkle everything with some more sugar and cayenne pepper. 

Stores well in an airtight container for a few days.