Tips to myself on the next pumpkin pie

Three pumpkin pies just came out of the oven, and they are better than I thought they would be. I had two slices! It was all from the one pumpkin from our garden, and it was more than six hours from pumpkin to plate. When it went into the oven it was an uncertain soup of spiced glop. The pumpkin pie was so soupy that I thought it could never firm up at all. And some sort of miracle happened.

Tips to myself on the next try... sieve the puree MORE. I spooned off all of the extra juice I could, but there was so much more in the puree sieving it would have done a wonder. Also, it was supposed to be two cans of evaporated milk. I did not have two cans of evaporated milk but had MUCH more than 2 cups of puree... so I mixed another can of whole milk into the evaporated milk. It worked, but probably only because I put the soupy mess in a pan on the stove and cooked it on VERY LOW for about a half hour stirring it every minute. And only then did it look like something that was less than water to put into the shortbread crust.

The shortbread crust was also a very good idea - it works so very well with the pie filling, which is already sweet in itself and did not need a sweet graham cracker crust on top of it.

Grandma and Grandpa will get their promised pie tomorrow! Having never done it in my thirty-plus years, and having a newfound interest in growing pumpkins, it was about time to try. Mark said just think of what thirty years of experience would do to the recipe ;) Eeep!


This was the pumpkin!
from our garden last week

Double-recipe, actually made 3 pies

1 cup dark brown sugar, packed
2/3 cup white sugar
1 tsp salt
lemon zest approximated from one small lemon
3 teaspoons cinnamon (maybe a bit less next time, but the recipe asked for 4!)
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg (used a tiny bit less)
12 oz. can evaporated milk
12 oz. can refilled with whole milk
4 eggs and 2 extra yolks
4 cups pureed pumpkin mixture, not packed

mixture on stovetop on LOW for 30-40 minutes until it began to congeal just a tiny bit, then poured into shortbread crusts (purchased) and put in oven at 425 for 15-20 minutes, then at 350 for more than an hour until the knife came up clean.

Recipes to use more of the pumpkin with:
Pumpkin bread
Cream cheese pumpkin muffins

And, next year I am planning on planting some 'sugar pie' type pumpkins. I already had the seed but did not plan it this year. The pumpkins I am using are 'field' type pumpkins, which are heirlooms, but are not considered the right type for making pies.