Apparently there is a major pumpkin shortage this year. I was very excited to make chocolate chip pumpkin cake and went to buy some canned pumpkin and to my surprise there was not one can left. When I asked about it they told me there is a pumpkin shortage due to a bad pumpkin crop last year. This is very disappointing.

I guess you should make sure you can still get pumpkin in your area before offering pumpkin cake to your clients this year.

And all your pumpkin pie lovers... better go to plan "B"

Wow...there's lots of pumpkins here. I just bought a couple of pie pumpkins at Walmart, they were 78 cents a pound. Last year I stocked up on canned pumpkin when they cleared it after Thanksgiving, and I've still got about 15 cans left too

It's not too hard to use fresh pumpkin instead of canned, if you can get those. Usually you need to leave it in a strainer for a few hours or decrease the liquid in your recipe to make it work right.

making it from scratch seems like so much work when you can just open a can... LOL I'm not lazy I just have a 5 and 2 year old.

I use canned pumpkin all the time and noticed late summer that they were always out and it was never on sale for .99cents anymore, then one day a couple of weeks ago they actually had a sign on the shelf saying they were out due to poor growing conditions, yet there are pie pumpkins and carving pumpkins all over the place for .49cents a pound.

I use real pupmkins all the time (the pie ones). I cut them in half and scrape out the seeds. put in a glass baking dish and add about 1 1/2 inches of water and roast in the oven for a while.

I have also cooked it in the micorwave in 12 min intervals. I do it both ways and the pumpkin doesn't get all watery.

We have 9 in our garage right now.
I cut them up and bake them until soft. Then I remove the pulp from the skin andd rain it in a colander. I put it in zipper bags and freeze it. I like to measure the amount I usually use so all I have to do is defrost. We have pumpkin all year round.

I do the same thing! I make some bags with the right amount for pie and some for bread and others just one cup for other recipes.

I noticed this too! Then I finally saw the newspaper article about it, stating what the OP said. I admit it was easy to roast a pie pumpkin but it was a lot more expensive. I'd say it netted me 2c of pumpkin for $2.50...and a 15oz can is usually only $1.50 plus I don't have to waste $$ running the oven. I saw a few 28oz cans at Vons the other day and bought one...what was I thinking, I should have bought them all! . No seriously, the article I read said that the stores expect to have plenty in stock for Thanksgiving and beyond, but right now the shelves are bare.

For those of you roasting pie pumpkins, do you find those as flavorful as the canned kind? The article pointed out that pie pumpkins are still not the same exact kind as used in canned. I made pumpkin pancakes the other day w/the one I roasted, and they weren't very pumpkiny. Don't know if that was due to the pie pumpkin or if the recipe really just isn't that pumpkiny.

I heard about the shortage a couple of weeks ago, but didn't take it too seriously...then I went to buy some! I finally found a single can at the third store I tried. So when I was back at that store a few days ago, and saw a freshly-stocked shelf, I made sure to get a few more cans (and I don't use a lot of pumpkin...). Even the cashier commented how lucky I was to find it. But I've since been to two more stores, and they both had big displays full of canned pumpkin...so maybe the crisis is over!

According to my gardening catalogs, the canned pumpkin is actually a variety of squash. I cannot recall the name at the moment, but I raised a bunch several years ago that I roasted, pureed and froze and they were delicious. Full of the familiar pumpkin flavor. Incidentally, they are all over the markets here in MO.