Pumpkin Pie

I make a lot of fruit pies from scratch, but there is much to be said for the “open some cans” simplicity of pumpkin pie. Once upon a time I didn’t have pumpkin (pie) spice on hand, I followed Modern Honey’s recipe and the classic Eagle Brand recipe for the spices. (They are the same except for some variety in the spice lists.)

Since I usually make shortening crusts, I followed the New York Times' single all-butter crust recipe, but you can use a single 9" shortening crust instead or even a store-bought one.

I happened to have a can of sweetened condensed milk around; many pumpkin pie recipes take the evaporated milk can route instead.

Makes: 1 9" pie.

Ingredients

Butter Crust

• 1 ¼ sticks (10 T., 5 oz.) butter, chilled
• 1 ¼ c. flour (150 g.)
• ¼ tsp. fine salt
• 2–4 T. cold water

Alternately, any 9" single-crust pie shell.

Pie

• 1 15 oz. can pumpkin
• 1 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
• 2 eggs
• ½ tsp. vanilla
• ¼ tsp. salt
• ½ T. cinnamon
• ½ tsp. nutmeg
• ½ tsp. ginger
• dash clove
• dash allspice

Directions

1. Mix up the dough for the crust in the usual way. (See my crust recipe for detailed instructions.)
2. Chill dough for 1 hour to 2 days.
3. Roll out dough.
4. Optionally, blind bake the shell at 375° for about 25 minutes, filled with pie weights and/or dried beans. Be sure to protect the edge.
5. Preheat oven to 425°.
6. Mix the filling ingredients, optionally using an immersion or other blender to smooth the pumpkin more.
7. Pour into crust.
8. Protect the crust edge.
9. Bake 15 minutes.
10. Reduce temperature to 350° and bake 35 more minutes (+/- 3 minutes).
11. Cool.
12. Refrigerate for one hour.
13. Serve with whipped cream, if desired.

Variants

Replace spices with 1 T. pumpkin spice.

You can puree your own pound of (cooked) sugar pumpkin or butternut squash.