Monthly Archives: October 2010

Pumpkin pie has become one of my most favourite desserts, and something that I bake on numerous occasions throughout Autumn. It took me ages to find a recipe that I got along with, one that wasn’t too complicated or that called for too many hard to come by ingredients (read, ingredients not available outside of North America). I’ve ended up combining several different recipes and now have my very own go-to Pumpkin Pie recipe that’s both simple to make and delicious!

With my recipe there’s no need for hard to come by canned Pumpkin, instead I make use of my previously made & frozen Pumpkin Purée Recipe. Of course, if you have a can of pumpkin to hand then just use that instead!

Ingredients

For the pastry
Here you can either use a pack of ready-made sweet shortcrust pastry or…
125g Plain Flour
30g Caster Sugar
55g butter
2-3 tbsp of water

For the pumpkin pie filling
3 medium eggs
350ml can of evaporated milk
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
40g soft brown sugar
450g pumpkin purée (approximately the amount you get from a medium sized culinary pumpkin)
Pinch of salt

Let’s Go!

Step 1 is to create your base. I used a food processor to make my shortcrust pastry. If you’re doing the same, add the dry ingredients and the butter and whizz it up until it’s crumbed. Then slowly add the water as the food processor is still going. Add the water until your pastry is in one giant clump. Be careful not to add too much water, nobody will be friends with someone who makes sloppy shortcrust pastry.

If you’re planning on doing this by hand you’ll have to rub the butter into the dry ingredients until it’s crumbed, then combine with the water until you get the pastry.

When your pastry is ready (using either method) wrap it in cling film and put it in the fridge for 20-30 minutes.

Whilst your pastry is firming up in the fridge it’s a great time to make the pumpkin pie filling. Simply combine all the ingredients in a large bowl and mix with a whisk. You might find it to be quite runny, this is normal so don’t freak out.

In the spirit of not over complicating this recipe I decided not to blind bake my base (blind baking is the act of cooking the base before adding a filling). The recipes that I’ve looked at in the past for Pumpkin Pie are all about 50-50 as to whether you need to blind bake, anyway.

Get yourself a 9.5″ pie dish, or any kind of pie dish you have, let’s not be picky.. to be honest, I just got the first dish that I saw in the cupboard. Take your firmed up pastry out of the fridge and roll into a nice circuloid (I know that’s not a word) shape, at least of a size that you can drape over your pie dish and fit nicely down the sides of it. Trim it neatly so that you end up with a lovely lined pie dish.

Slowly fill your pie case with the filling and place it in the centre of a preheated oven at 180ºC (fan assisted) for around 40 minutes or until golden on top. You might find it still appears quite wobbly, but this should firm up.

And you’re done! Enjoy your pumpkin pie with vanilla icecream or whipped cream. Om nom!

I mentioned in my post about pumpkin purée yesterday that we ended up making roast pumpkin seeds from the guts of our pumpkins. Having never tried to make them before we decided that it seemed a relatively simple task, and at Adam’s request (and made up recipe) we gave it a shot.

Firstly we removed as many pumpkin seeds as possible from the flesh that we’d scraped from the centre. We put these on a paper kitchen towel to dry off a little before putting them on a baking sheet with rock salt, ground black pepper and olive oil.

Then we put the coated pumpkin seeds in the oven at around 200ºC for approximately 40 minutes, until they were golden and crispy. That’s it. So, so simple and  a great little snack! Next time I want to try roasting the pumpkin seeds with a coating of honey…!

When I first made a pumpkin pie a few years ago I pretty much fell in love. If you’ve never tried it before it’s definitely something you need in your life.

The easiest start to a pumpkin pie is using canned pumpkin purée, it’s the perfect consistency, amount and even has a recipe on the can. Unfortunately canned pumpkin purée can be hard to come by in the UK, locally I’ve only found it available in Selfridges food court in their USA import section (and at a hefty price!).

Other times I’ve puréed my own pumpkin which I’ve found is so much cheaper, if a little time consuming. This year I decided to do some puréeing in batches and freezing quantities for later use.

Here, I’m using two culinary pumpkins (not the giant ones used for carving, make sure you buy culinary ones as the others don’t have any flavour) and will be roasting, scooping, puréeing, straining and freezing.

First of all prepare your pumpkins by taking off the tops, cutting them in half and scooping out their guts. We saved our seeds and roasted them, I’ll add that recipe later on…

Add the two halves (or all four from both your pumpkins, if your roasting pan/oven is large enough) to the roasting pan with a bit of water, about half an inch worth.

Put them in the oven at around 200ºC for about 60 minutes, or until they’re soft throughout. You can see our pumpkin seeds roasting in the bottom, yumyum!

When your pumpkin’s cooked you should let them cool a little before scooping the flesh into a food processor. Blitz it up until the pumpkin is smooth and lump free.

After you’re happy with the blitzing you’ll need to strain the excess water from the purée, this will help you TONNES when you come to make actual food with the puree. A sloppy pie is so depressing.

I set up my straining system like this. You see, I don’t have a cheese cloth, or any muslin (apart from my Liz Earle cleansing cloths… um, no), so instead I am using part of a steaming pan and some kitchen roll. Classsssy. Worked a treat, though.

Leave it to drain for an hour or so and then you’re done!

I froze my pumpkin in pumpkin-size batches because these worked out quite well, being about the same amount as the cans you can get. As a guide a pumpkin pie usually calls for between 350-450g of pumpkin.

You can of course use this purée in other recipes, here are some ideas…

• Pumpkin muffins
• Pumpkin filled pasta
• Pumpkin soup
• Pumpkin cheesecake
• Pumpkin cake/loaf
• Pumpkin cookies