pumpkin pie

pumpkin pie

• 7 Nov 2016

With a large piece of pumpkin left in my fridge I needed to find a way to use it. I oven roasted a piece and used some of the pumpkin to make a risotto and with the rest, I pureed it and made a pumpkin pie. 



Now I quite like pumpkin pie, but when I looked back through the archives for the recipe I realised I'd not made a pumpkin pie since 2012. How did that happen? 



I decided to use a tried and true recipe and thought I'd pretty up the pie by applying leaf shaped cut outs to the rim. Bad idea. Don't do it. The leaves kind of disintegrated during the blind baking so I had to make a new batch of leaves that I applied to the baked pie. 



To make them a bit more special I put veins on the leaves, glazed the leaves with milk and topped the cut-outs with some granulated sugar.



It's a bit of a fiddle but I think the pie looks pretty, so the effort was worth it and you can bake these the same time the pie crust is blind baking in the oven. They should take about 10 minutes to reach golden brownness.



I topped the pie with some icing sugar to pretty it up a little and served the pie with a dollop of cream.



If you'd like to make the pie, here's the recipe for you, adapted from here. For all my recipes, I use a 250 ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon. All eggs are 60 grams and my oven is a conventional gas oven not fan forced, so you may need to reduce your oven temperature by 20°C.

Pumpkin Pie Recipe 
Pastry
Olive oil spray
250g (1⅔ cups) Plain Flour
2 teaspoons caster sugar
160g butter, chilled, chopped
2 tablespoons cold water

Filling
345g (1¼ cups) pumpkin puree
2 tablespoons maple syrup
250ml reduced fat cream or half and half
½-⅔ cup brown sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon ground ginger

To serve
Icing sugar, to dust
Double cream, to serve

Method
Spray a 23cm/9 inch pie plate with oil. Process the flour, sugar and butter in a food processor until the butter is in pea size pieces. Add the cold water and process the mixture a few times until the pastry just comes together. Remove the pastry from the food processor, gently squeeze the pastry together into a ball and wrap in plastic. Place in the fridge for an hour.

Preheat oven to 190°C. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured sheet of baking paper and roll to a 4mm-thick disc. Line the base and side of the dish with pastry and trim any excess. Pinch edges to crimp. The amount of pastry is generous so if you like you can cut out some leaf shapes to decorate the cooked pie.

Line the pastry case with baking paper and fill with pastry weights or rice. Bake for 10 - 15 minutes. Remove paper and weights or rice and bake for a further 10- 15 minutes or until light golden. Set aside to cool completely.

Reduce the oven temperature to 170°C. Combine the pumpkin puree, maple syrup, cream, sugar, eggs, vanilla, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and ginger in a bowl. Whisk until smooth then pour over the pastry (I like a very smooth texture so I sieve the mixture first before pouring into the shell). Bake for 45 - 55 minutes or until just set. Set aside to cool completely.



Dust the cooled pie with icing sugar. Cut into wedges and serve with double cream.



The pie filling is barely sweet using ½ cup of brown sugar so if you like a sweeter pie filling, I'd increase the sugar to ⅔ cup and check the filling for sweetness before baking.



A nice slice of pie. I might see you later in the week with some jacaranda photos, otherwise I'll see you all again next week with another little pumpkin flavoured treat.

Bye for now,

Jillian