Thanks for posting!

No idea if interchangeable, but pretty sure about differences. Canned pumpkin is just that... pureed pumpkin and probably some kinda preservative. Pumpkin pie filling gives you a jump-start on a pie... spices, sugar, etc.

I agree that home-cooked pumpkin is wetter than commercially canned pumpkin. When I want to start from scratch, I cook the pumpkin, remove it from the skin, puree the pulp in a Foley food mill, then put it in the bottom of a shallow roasting pan and bake it for several hours at about 200 degrees, stirring it occasionally. I cook much more than I think I'll need then freeze any left-overs in 1-cup quantities. The tiny, darker pumpkins have much better flavor than the giant Jack-o-lantern ones, but I think our tastebuds are trained to seek the depth and consistency of flavor that comes in a can.

Trader Joe’s carries Pumpkin Butter in the fall. People rave about it. I bought some last year and didn’t care for it. To me it tasted more like pumpkin pie spice and not enough like pumpkin. I love apple butter and it was nothing like it. The consistency was too thin, also, more like a sauce: it would slide right off whatever you put it on. I was on a local gardening forum and someone was talking about making her own pumpkin butter from the pumpkins she grew. It looked so much better and thicker than the Trader Joe’s version that it got me thinking in that vein of how to use my pie pumpkins. (I buy a couple to use on my porch for Halloween, then eat them after. The first year I did this, it was so thin it was good only for soup.) She’s the one that cooked it down in the slow cooker to make it thicker after roasting. Using it in quickbread is far more likely than in any other form. I had a pumpkin cinnamon scone a few weeks ago that was really tasty.