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. Since I don’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
- Mix up the dough for the crust in the usual way. (See my shortening crust recipe for detailed instructions.)
- Chill dough for 1 hour to 2 days.
- Roll out dough.
- 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.
- Preheat oven to 425°.
- Mix the filling ingredients, optionally using an immersion or other blender to smooth the pumpkin more.
- Pour into crust.
- Protect the crust edge.
- Bake 15 minutes.
- Reduce temperature to 350° and bake 35 more minutes (+/- 3 minutes).
- Cool.
- Refrigerate for one hour.
- Serve with whipped cream, if desired.
Variants
The New York Times crust recipe includes an interesting option for a cheddar cheese crust.
Replace spices with 1 T. pumpkin spice.
You can puree your own pound of (cooked) sugar pumpkin or butternut squash.
