Our baked pumpkin custard is super easy to make, has an incredible silky texture, and of course is both gluten-free and vegan! You can serve it plain, or dress it up with vegan whipped topping or vanilla ice cream; sometimes we even top it with some of our super-easy, super-awesome homemade fresh cranberry sauce, it’s super yummy!

The main ingredients in this pumpkin custard are canned pumpkin (not canned pumpkin pie filling!), and canned coconut milk. (The difference between canned pumpkin and canned pumpkin pie filling is that the canned pumpkin pie filling contains added sugar and spices, and often also contains added preservatives.) By contrast, our pumpkin custard contains pure pumpkin and pure coconut milk, and the only sweetener is just four tablespoons of maple syrup. We get organic canned coconut milk and organic maple syrup from Costco.

Now, before we go any further, a word about the whole “canned pumpkin isn’t actually pumpkin, it’s squash” furor. Basically, it’s misleading and, in fact, downright wrong. But we can see how some people would be confused by this as the whole tempest in a teapot was spread on Facebook. The reality is that most canned pumpkin is a variety of pumpkin that is not pretty enough to be sold on its own in the produce aisle of your favorite grocery store, but it is a pumpkin.

As explained in rather pain-staking detail on Snopes, “the term “pumpkin” refers to members of four different species, C. moschata, C. mixta, C. pepo, and C. maxima.” The majority of pumpkins that are sold as canned pumpkin belong to the C. moschata species, while the pumpkins you typically see at the grocery store and purchase to carve on Halloween are of the C. pepo variety. To further compound things, of course all pumpkins are technically squash. So in that way the “ohmygod theskyisfalling there’s squash in them thar cans” crowd is right, but not really.

Easy and Delicious Baked Pumpkin Custard