Mark and I took Anna to the pumpkin patch recently. It was so much fun; Mark was working at a hospital a mile away from the pumpkin patch, and he was having a slow afternoon so he came and joined us for a little while. Impromptu family date :) She was old enough this year to actually enjoy running around and looking at pumpkins, and she picked out a couple pie ones to bring home. For the last two years (since having a child to take to pumpkin patches!) I have made pies from scratch, and really enjoy doing it! It only takes a couple of hours from start to finish, and I get far more compliments on my home-made pies than I ever do when I just buy one from Walmart :) I decided to blog my pie-making experience this year, so here you go: pumkpin pie from scratch! (Note: I am NOT your resident pie-making expert! If you have other tips you can share, I'd be glad to hear them! :) Also, I used a frozen roll-out crust rather than making my own. There's only so much time in one little girl's nap!)
1. Go to the pumpkin patch and get someone cute to help you pick out your pie pumpkin. Ours were about 8 inches in diameter. (This is a guess; they were very similar in size to Anna's head, so find a 17-mo old's head to compare!)
2. Rinse your pumpkin to remove any dirt from the outside.
Tip: before you do anything else, get a Walmart bag and spread it out in your sink so you have somewhere to throw all the mess. This makes cleaning up a lot easier!
3. Cut the pumpkin in half. A serrated knife and sawing motion seemed to be the general online consensus, but I found that a 'rocking' motion with the knife was easier than straight-up sawing.
4. Scoop out the guts. For a smooth textured pie, scoop out all the strings. I used my ice-cream scoop, which was pretty labour-unintensive :)
5. Cut each half of the pumpkin into smaller chunks, ready for cooking. I cut each half into thirds, and then cut each of the thirds into thirds too. Obviously the smaller you cut the chunks, the quicker they'll cook :)
I steamed one half of the pumpkin in the microwave in a pyrex bowl with a lid, and the other half on the stove in a steamer. I didn't find that one was any quicker or more effective than the other. With the size of chunks that I used, it took between 15 and 20 minutes to completely cook. (I set my microwave to cook in 5-minute increments and just kept checking it.) It's done when the flesh of the pumpkin pulls away from the skin easily.
6. Peel it! I found using a dessert spoon to be quite effective. Also, preheat the over to 425.
7. Blend or puree the pumpkin flesh till it is smooth and without chunks. I have used my hand blender each time I did this and the texture is great; I'm sure any blending appliance would work just fine!
8. Get your pie crust out! Like I said, I bought one of those refrigerated rolled-up sheets of pastry and cheated on the crust. I did have to trim it to size and lay it in my pie dish, though, so I stopped one step short of totally selling out and getting a ready-to-bake one :) I baked my crust before adding the filling. If you do that, remember to put tin-foil over the edges of the filled crust once you bake it again, so the edges poking out above the filling don't get burned.
9. Add the following ingredients to the pumpkin puree and mix well. I just used my hand blender again. The resulting mixture will be runny; mine is usually about the consistency of stage 1 baby food. Panic not, the pie will thicken up perfectly :) Pour the pumpkin into your pie shell. I had a lot left over, as you can see from the picture below. I just froze it in a gallon ziploc.
1 cup sugar
1.5 t ground cinnamon
1 t ground cloves
1 t ground all-spice
0.5 t ground ginger
0.5 t salt
4 eggs
18oz evaporated milk (= 1.5 tins)
0.5 t vanilla extract
10. Bake for 15 minutes at 425, then turn the oven down to 350 and bake until a knife inserted into the middle comes out clean. In my oven, with a pie the size mine turned out to be, this took about 40 minutes. Invite some friends over for dessert, and enjoy!
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