Pumpkin Pie Podcast

Welcome to Pat's Pie Show. Today we are going to make pumpkin pie using my mother's recipe. Pumpkin pie is always a favorite around the holidays, sure to be a crowd pleaser and sooo... simple to make, which is a welcome relief during the crazy holiday time. 

Pumpkin pie is a traditional North American dessert usually made in the late autumn and early winter, especially for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. The pie consists of a pumpkin-based custard, ranging in color from orange to brown, baked in a single pie shell  . The pie is generally flavored with nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and ginger and is traditionally served with whipped cream.

The canned pumpkin available at the store usually has a recipe that calls for canned milk, but mine uses fresh milk and similar but slightly different spices, specifically using allspice instead of cloves and nutmeg. 

What is allspice I asked myself. Is it simply a pre-mix of various other spices? Well, no actually it isn't. Allspice is the dried unripe fruit of the Pimenta treer. The name "allspice" was coined by the English, who thought it combined the flavour of several aromatic spices, such as cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.

Speaking of canned pumpkin, in this show we are not going to make our own cooked pumpkin for this recipe. Feel free to experiment. If you want to make your own pumpkin puree, avoid field pumpkins, which are bred for perfect jack o' lanterns: they tend to be too large and stringy for baking. Ask your grocer or farmer for sugar pie pumpkins: small and sweet, with dark orange-colored flesh. A medium-sized (4-pound) sugar pumpkin should yield around 1½ cups of mashed pumpkin. This puree can be used in all your recipes calling for canned pumpkin. When using the canned pumpkin, be sure to get the plain pumpkin puree, not the already spiced pumpkin pie mix. I like the 

The pumpkin pie that I make yields two 9 inch pies, in a single pie shell, so you will need enough pastry to make two crusts. Feel free to use your favorite from scratch pastry reciepe or use a good quality frozen crust.

Now for the ingredients:
5 eggs, beaten
29 oz. can of pumpkin puree
1 1/2 Cup of sugar
1 teaspoon of salt
2 teaspoons of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of ginger
1 teaspoon of allspice
2 cups of milk

Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees fahrenheit.

Mix the eggs, pumpkin, sugar, salt and spices. Add the milk and stir or mix until smooth. 

Line two 9 inch pie pans with pastry. Crimp the pastry edges with fingers to make a taller, pretty edge. Trim any excess pastry by cutting against the pie pan with the edge of a knife. Pour in filling. Loosely cover pastry edge with tin foil. My Mom had this cool paper that stretched over the pastry edge, but I don't know if there is anything available like it. I always cut a couple of 2 inch wide strips of foil and fold them together to overlap the middle edges, making one long strip and then crimp it together again after wrapping around the pie pastry edge. I find I don't need to be too fussy with this, just getting it to stay in place to get it into the oven.

Once the oven is pre-heated, place the pies in the middle rack of the oven. Bake for 45 min. to one hour. Test doneness: knife inserted halfway between center and edge comes out clean.

Let pies cool and refrigerate if not using immediately, remember this is custard!

When ready to serve, if I have refrigerated it, I like to warm it ever so slightly to take the chill off and let the flavors come out. Serve with a dollop of fresh whipped cream. Yum.

Hope you enjoyed this week's recipe. It is easy, my family loves it. I love it because it makes two pies with very little prep time. One to share with friends, office mates, or give away, and one for home. 

Next week we'll shift from the easy as pie pumpkin to a more difficult meringue topped pie. I'll be using my mother-in-law's recipe for lemon meringue. My neighbor's lemons that hang over my driveway are just ripening. This recipe is nice and tart. Meringue can be tricky, but I'll give you several tips for getting it right. Thanks for listening, this is Pat's Pie show, see you next week. 

If you have the iTunes enhanced version of this weeks podcast, you will find a link to download the PDF version of the recipe at the end of the podcast. Or just go to www.patriciarees.com/pies and look for the pumpkin pie recipe.