I'm just gonna come right out and say it: I don't like pumpkin pie. And I don't really like baking. So why did I spend almost an ENTIRE DAY baking a pumpkin pie?
Because I love my son. That is the only reason.
Cubby wanted to make a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. He's into pie, as I've mentioned before, and he knows pumpkin pie is the traditional pie for Thanksgiving. So he asked to make one.
We have so much squash on hand, it's ridiculous, so I said okay. I thought, since neither of us is an expert pie baker, it would be best to make this pie the day before so I wasn't dealing with a kid in the kitchen and an unfamiliar dish while simultaneously cooking the rest of the holiday meal.
This turned out to be the only smart thing I did in the entire process.
Although I have plenty of squash already cooked and in the freezer, I figured I might as well just cook one of the squash that's still sitting in A.'s office. So I stuck one in the oven at 8 a.m.
When the squash was done, Cubby scooped it out into the food processor and we pureed it. Then he started making the crust, using this recipe. He wanted to do it all himself, so I just read the recipe to him while he did it.
While he was doing that, I started removing the squash from the food processor. It was nice and smooth and thick. I tasted a bit as I was putting it in a Pyrex to measure it. Good thing, because the entire thing tasted like mold.
Awesome. This is what I get for not using a can of pumpkin, like a normal person.
So all eight cups of that nicely pureed squash went to the chickens, and I took two bags of frozen squash out of the freezer after all.
Cubby meanwhile had finished his pie dough and put one half of it in the refrigerator to chill. The other half went into the freezer for some future use.
I had to thaw the frozen lumps of squash, so those went into a pot on the stove to simmer until it was all thawed. I had to use a pot anyway for the pumpkin pie filling--according to this recipe--so I figured I might as well thaw the squash in the pot.
Then I transfered the squash to the food processor, again, and pureed it. Again. And then I tasted it, again. No mold. Hooray!
Moving on.
I measured out the approximately four cups of squash we would need back into the pot and then called Cubby back into the kitchen to add the spices. Again, he wanted to do it himself as I read the recipe to him. I sat at the table to read the recipe from my computer while he was at the stove measuring spices. Then he turned the stove on and the squash started blurping all over my stove. And the wall behind it.
Cubby thought this was awesome and called Charlie in to see. I told him to STIR IT so I wouldn't be washing half the squash off the wall.
I was so over all of this already.
Now it was time to get the pie dough out of the refrigerator and roll it out. I told Cubby I would stir the squash while he did that.
While I was stirring, I tasted a bit. Remember how well that went last time I tasted squash. Yeah, this wasn't any better.
No mold this time, but waaaay too many spices in that pot. This was explained when I asked Cubby what he used to measure the spices and he showed me the teaspoon measure. He was supposed to use a half teaspoon measure. So there was twice as much spices as there was supposed to be.
It tasted gross, all acrid and way too gingery. Even though Cubby definitely added more than the recipe called for, I think this recipe as written called for a LOT more ginger than necessary. I had to add all the rest of the pureed squash to the pan, and it still was too spicy. So I ended up adding a can of pumpkin I actually had in the pantry, thanks to our neighbors and the commodities drop-off, to further dilute the spices.
Yes, you can all chortle over the fact that after all that crap with the squash, I STILL ended up using a can of pumpkin. I just couldn't face thawing and pureeing yet more squash.
Anyway, we ended up with twice as much filling in the pot, which did not help the spattering situation.
I froze the extra pie filling, to be used at some future date with the other pie dough in the freezer. How fortuitous.
There were no notable disasters with the rolling of the pie dough, although Cubby did have to be instructed more than once to roll it out more. I don't have a pie plate, so we were using a cake pan, which is a little higher, I think.
We used pinto beans as our weights for the blind baking. I dumped a full quart jar of dry pinto beans into the lined pie crust and found when I poured them back into the jar that the hot pinto beans had apparently swelled a bit in the oven. I found this out when many beans went cascading all over my counter and onto the floor.
Sigh.
The blind baking proceeded without incident, and then we put the custard filling into the pie shell. I did not push the filling through a strainer as instructed by the recipe, because I was not about to get involved in anything like that after everything that had already happened.
After the complete pie was in the oven, I set Cubby to washing some of the millions of dishes that had been used during this fiasco. The pie was supposed to bake at 400 degrees for ten minutes, at which point I turned it down to 300 degrees, per the recipe.
About ten minutes after that, I realized that the oven had been accidentally turned down to less than 200 degrees while Cubby was putting dishes on the stove to dry.
At least I noticed it relatively quickly, I guess, although it was just the icing on this incredibly annoying cake. Or rather, pie.
The pie came out of the oven at 1:35 p.m. That's five and a half hours after we embarked on this ridiculous project.
Obviously, we haven't eaten it yet, but I think I can state with some certainty that it was definitely NOT WORTH IT. I don't care if it's the best pumpkin pie in the history of pies. And I know it isn't, because of the overabundance of ginger.
But it's done, and we will have pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving dinner.
We are also having turkey, which I also don't like and have never made but promised Cubby, again, that I would do it this year because EVERYONE has turkey for Thanksgiving, MOM.
I can only hope the turkey isn't as annoying as the pie.
9 comments:
Ha! This is the first year I am actually NOT making a pie. Every year I have made at least two pies--a pumpkin and a chocolate pie (Smitten Kitchen's chocolate pie is amazing), but this year three of us are staying away from sugar for health reasons. I didn't want to have a lot of sweet stuff hanging around, an And my usual enthusiasm for baking has taken a hit, so after calculating the cost, I realized a frozen pumpkin pie would be JUST AS ECONOMICAL as making my own. So I bought one.
On a related note, my kids tasted boxed stuffing at some point this year and said it was, and I quote, "just as good as your homemade stuffing, Mom!" So guess what stuffing they're getting tomorrow? Yup. I am trying Smitten Kitchen's Corn Pudding, though. And I made cranberry sauce, because I love homemade cranberry sauce.
Congratulations Cubby! I used to put all the ingredients in the blender (have to replace the blender) and pour them into the pie crust, and it seemed to be just fine. Sometimes a pumpkin pie is just a pumpkin pie, and I honestly can't imagine using a recipe for pumpkin pie that is so complicated. Which is not to say that I did not make the lemon meringue pie from Cook's Illustrated, which is, indeed, about three steps more complicated than most lemon meringue recipes. I actually retrieved from the freezer an extra portion of the pie dough that Cubby and I made in June--and I just pricked the crust well prior to baking. Some day I will have pie weights. The beans are just a pain. Good luck with the turkey!
Samcarter: If it had been chocolate pie, I wouldn't have been so made about it all. Because I actually want to EAT a chocolate pie, which is definitely not the case wit pumpkin. I also love cranberry sauce, but alas, A. forgot to get the cranberries when he was at the store last time. And there is no "running to the store" here, so I guess the cranberry sauce will have to wait until Christmas.
MiL: I really, really wished you had been here. I would have been out of this kitchen SO FAST and left all of this to the expert.
The best and easiest recipe is on the back of the Libby’s pumpkin can. I always leave out the cloves and ginger anyway.
I just mix my ingredients up (probably similar to Libby's pumpkin can recipe ingredients) and pour them into my unbaked pie crust. I do not have luck with blind baking, so I don't bother and it turns out just fine.
I was not a pumpkin pie fan at all until I stumbled across James Beard's recipe. Perhaps not suitable for children due to the cognac nor for arteries due to the abundance of eggs and cream. I love that pie! Now I only eat the traditional kind if there is no other offering and there is plenty of whipped cream on hand.
I must chime in again--I looked up James Beard's recipe, and it DOES look good. I feel that Kristin would at least like the cognac, though maybe she would prefer it in a drink and not in the pie--
Some people also swear by rum in a pumpkin pie. Best plan: try the rum in the pie and drink the cognac. The cream and eggs are definitely keepers.
Becky: That recipe is not all that different in ingredients and proportions to the one I used, with the notable addition of the cognac. The MiL is correct, though, that I would rather drink it than eat it. I'm not much of a liquour in my food kind of person. I think any future pumpkin pies made in this house will just be MUCH lighter on the ginger. I like ginger, but not that much.
My gluten free pumpkin pie recipe is quite similar to the Libby's version, with the addition of 1/4 cup of gf flour mixed into filling itself. It helps firm up and holds a traditional pie wedge shape, but is baked with NO crust. Definitely not for crust lovers, but I've scraped lots of dessert plates over the years, and can verify that lots of folks won't miss it.
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