Just found this recipe to please vegans (and others) with a sweet tooth:
Japanese Cake/Wagashi: Pumpkin/Kabotcha Wagashi!

INGREDIENTS: For 5 cakes
-Pumkin paste: 20 g
-Rice flour: 30 g
-Sugar: 12 g
-Water: 50 ml
-Sweetmeats/Anko (See Recipe here)
-Cornstarch: enough for operation
-Pumpkin seeds or pine nuts: 5 (for decoration)

RECIPE:

-Peel skin from pumkin and heat pulp inside microwave oven until soft enough to make paste. Let cool down completely.

-In an oven bowl mix well punpkin paste, rice flour, sugar and water until it becomes bubbly. Cover with cellophane paper and heat for 40 seconds at 700W inside microwave oven.

-Work the paste until smooth.

-Using cornstarch to work paste more easily as it will easily stick to yor fingers, divide the paste into 5 identical portions.

-Divide sweetmeats/anko into 5 identical parts and fashion them into small balls.
Coat your fingers with a little cornstarch and completely wrap sweetmeat/anko ball with pumpkin paste as shown in picture.

-Make indents around the ball with a wooden sticks to shape the ball into a small pumpkin.

-As soon as the ball is finished, gently brush away whatever cornstarch is left on the surface.

-On top of each pumpkin cake place a seed for decoration and effect!

-That is how your “pumpkin” will look when you cut it!

NOTE:
You can sieve the pumpkin pulp first for a finer texture.