Whole Wheat Pumpkin Cheese Ravioli

More ravioli!

Stuffed with pumpkin & cheese filling.

More ravioli you ask? Yup! Truth be-told is that I recently picked up a new gadget. C and I went shopping a couple weeks back and decided to stop by HomeSense to do some browsing. They have some fairly good bargains, but you usually have to do some digging and careful browsing. We weren’t looking for anything in particular but C ended up finding a nifty ravioli mold – it came with a metal mold with 24 spaces and a small rolling pin.

I was so excited to test it out that I made ravioli the next day! #foodnerd

Its really cool and much faster. Two things that I learned from trial and error: 1) you have to put a ton of flour in the mold to prevent the dough from sticking and 2) you have to be careful not to over-fill the ravioli or it’ll explode out when you’re trying to roll/ cut the pasta.

Pumpkin Cheese Filling

• 1 1/2 C pumpkin puree
• 1/3 C Parmesan & Romano cheese blend
• 1/4 C creamed cheese, softened
• dash of nutmeg
• dash of pepper
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tbsp Italian seasoning

1. In a large bowl, cream the softened creamed cheese
2. Add in the rest of the ingredients and mix well until completely incorporated
3. Set aside until ready to fill pasta

For the pasta dough, I went with this recipe. In terms of rolling the dough, I found that rolling the dough to #6 on the kitchen aid pasta roller worked best with this pasta mold. I usually roll to #5, but it was slightly too thick when I tried to cut the pasta with the rolling pin.

Using a Pasta Mold

1. If you’re using a pasta mold for the first time, you’ll basically want to roll out two thin sheets of pasta, wide and long enough to cover the entire mold (don’t forget to generously flour the mold first before laying down your pasta!). If the dough doesn’t completely cover the width of the mold, you can gently stretch the dough.
2. Carefully press the dough into each of the mold pockets.
3. Spoon about a teaspoon or slightly less to just fill the pocket – careful not to overfill!
4. Using a pastry brush, carefully brush around the sides of each filling pocket to help create a seal between the pasta.
5. Next, lay your second piece of pasta down, and carefully press around the sides of each dough pocket to seal the dough in.
6. Lastly, the fun part. With a rolling pin, roll over the entire second pasta layer to seal and cut the ravioli.
7. Turn the mold over and carefully peel the pasta out if it doesn’t fall out by itself.
8. For full cooking instructions, check out my previous pasta post here.

The final dish – Pumpkin cheese ravioli with mushroom & spinach tomato sauce

I wasn’t sure how the pumpkin filling would turn out, but I actually quite liked it – there was a hint of pumpkin and the cheese also came through. Don’t think my brothers were big fans though – they like their meaty ravioli, not dainty little ‘veggie-filled’ ravioli.