Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Start to prepare your pumpkin as you would for carving: cut off a ‘lid’ and scoop out all the seeds and membranes. Put the lid back on and sit the whole pumpkin on a sturdy baking tray. Bake following our size guide (see 'Tip', below left).
Mix the grated cheeses with the cornflour until completely coated and no excess flour remains. Remove the pumpkin from the oven, discard the lid (or scrape off the roasted flesh and save for the Squidgy pumpkin & ginger loaf, see 'Goes well with') and increase the oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Layer up the cheese, crème fraîche, white wine, shallot and garlic inside the pumpkin. Lift back into the oven and bake for 30 mins or until the fondue is melted and bubbling. Eat with spoons, scooping out chunks of soft, roasted pumpkin with the melted cheese.
Anything larger than these measurements will take the same amount of time as the largest below, since once squashes and pumpkins reach a certain size, the cavities tend to increase proportionally – so the thickness of flesh remains roughly the same. Munchkins: 30 mins. 1kg/2lb 4oz squashes & pumpkins: about 1 hr. 1.5kg/3lb 5oz: about 1hr 30mins.
Wow, this is total autumn comfort food! I used a large pumpkin and doubled the fondue ingredients. Also quadrupled the garlic, no vampires will be visiting our house this Halloween!
Absolutely loved this recipe! It was a large pumpkin so I doubled the ingredients but omitted the cheddar and used cream cheese instead of creme fraiche as that's all I had. We had it with various vegetables and bread chunks and there were plenty of left overs which i have converted into a pumpkin gratin type dish to accompany dinner another day.
I made this recipe this evening and it turned out pretty well in the end, however roasting it with the lid on meant that all the moisture in the pumpkin condensed and I was left with a pumpkin full of water. I picked it up to drain it and the skin split, which made things a bit tricky. The situation was salvageable (I just put it in a snug-fitting casserole dish to support the broken side) but I wonder whether it might not make more sense to cook it with the lid off for at least some of the time? Or leave some kind of holes for the moisture to escape anyway. Also, I found it a bit tricky working out how big a pumpkin I'd need - I know the recipe says 300ml of fondue but it's very difficult to judge what size pumpkin this fits in. I just about squeezed this amount of cheese into a 1.5kg pumpkin which was I think about 18cm in diameter, this fed 5 of us as a main.
Tried this recipe for a dinner party starter and it made a wonderful centerpiece. Having done a bit of research online into similar recipes I decided to omit the cheddar as there was a risk of it splitting and being oily. Followed the other instructions and the end result was delicious. We dipped olive bread and chorizo, which went really well. Very tasty and not too heavy as some fondues can be. Will feature on our table every Autumn from now on!