“He gave his eyes… for cornbread.”

This is a very easy cornbread and a very easy use for pumpkin parts. There is no boiling or baking the pumpkin to prep it before using it. Just grate it like carrots. This recipe is in fact a slight modification of a carrot cornbread recipe from the El Molino Best cookbook. El Molino is itself a great cookbook with a great California-style cornbread.

I included the El Molino cornbread in my own Traveling Man’s Cookery. It’s a relatively sweet cornbread because, while it contains very little added sugar, carrots themselves contain quite a bit of sugar. It’s why some people choose to make carrot pie instead of pumpkin pie: it means less processed sugar. I’m not in that camp, but I do like the sweetness that carrots add to cornbread.

Pumpkins are not nearly as sweet as carrots, so this Halloween version is not nearly as sweet a cornbread. I switched out the brown sugar for molasses—preferably, sorghum molasses—to give what sweetness there is in the bread a hint of autumn.

Another syrup that ought to be great with pumpkin and cornmeal is maple syrup. So if you don’t have a source for sorghum molasses, or just don’t like it, consider trying maple. As a last resort, brown sugar will be fine, too. Brown sugar has molasses in it. Depending on the manufacturer, brown sugar is either sugar before the molasses has been (completely) removed, or white sugar with molasses added back in.

Serendipitously the color of pumpkin is much like the color of carrots. The orange in each case combines very pleasingly with the yellow of cornmeal. But given that foods as different as carrots and pumpkin taste great in this recipe, you could probably use any squash or root vegetable that you enjoy.

Zucchini would be the canonical choice in the area I grew up. I suspect it would produce a more green cornbread. You might even play that up by adding some herbs. Whatever herbs you enjoy with zucchini ought to be great in zucchini cornbread.

With zucchini I’d also go back to using sugar, possibly not even brown sugar; zucchini has a much more delicate flavor that might get overpowered by molasses or maple.

In any case, if you’ve been throwing away your pumpkin parts after carving your Halloween pumpkin, this cornbread is a wonderful autumn-oriented dish to use them in.

You can freeze grated pumpkin for later, and use it to make a great cornbread for your Thanksgiving meal, too. Cornbread is great any time of the year, but it’s especially great for gatherings, like Halloween, Thanksgiving, and any barbecue.