Pumpkin Pie Made with Real Pumpkin

Recipe modified from All Recipes https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/13711/homemade-fresh-pumpkin-pie/ by Nancy Scott with the Pie Crust from the King Arthur Flour site https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/classic-single-pie-crust-recipe .

Pie Filling Ingredients

1. Fresh pumpkin(s) (needs to be  enough to make four cups of cooked pumpkin)
2. 1/8 cup of vegetable oil
3. 1 (12 oz) can of evaporated milk
4. 3 eggs
5. ¾ cup packed brown sugar
6. ¼ cup maple syrup 
7. Spices
   1. 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
   2. 1 teaspoon ground ginger
   3. 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg (freshly grated nutmeg is lovely)
   4. 1/2 teaspoon of ground allspice or 1/4 teaspoon of ground cloves
   5. Or instead of the individual spice, you could have 3 teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice.
8. ½ teaspoon salt

Pie Crust Ingredients (https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/classic-single-pie-crust-recipe)

1. 1 ½ cups All Purpose Flour (I use King Arthur Flour)
2. ½ teaspoon salt
3. 4 tablespoons shortening (Note: I used solid coconut oil. You can also use all butter.)
4. 6 tablespoons unsalted butter
5. 3 to 5 tablespoons of ice water

Make the Pie

1. Cooking the pumpkin
   1. Turn on the oven to 400 degrees F.
   2. Line a sheet pan with aluminum foil, and lightly oil it with some of the vegetable oil
   3. Wash the pumpkin(s).
   4. Cut off the steam and cut the pumpkin in half.
   5. Scoop out the seeds and fibers
   6. Place the pumpkin cut side down on the sheet pan.
   7. Lightly oil the pumpkin skin. (Okay, you can drizzle with the oil.)
   8. Put pumpkin in the oven, and roast for about an hour. Check on it at 45 minutes, to see if it is soft. (The pumpkin should collapse.) If it isn’t ready, cook for another 10 minutes and check to see if it is soft. If not soft, check on it every 5 minutes until soft, and take out the oven.
2. While the pumpkin is roasting, make the pie crust. Use a 9”pie pan. (From the King Arthur web site)
   1. Whisk together the flour and salt.
   2. Add the shortening, working it in until the mixture is evenly crumbly. If using all butter, work 4 tablespoons of butter in at point.
   3. Add the butter to the flour mixture, and work it in roughly with your fingers, a pastry cutter, or a mixer. Don’t be too thorough; the mixture should be very uneven, with big chunks of butter in among the smaller ones.
   4. Add 2 tablespoons of water, and toss to combine.
   5. Toss with enough additional water to make a chunky mixture. It should barely hold together when you squeeze a handful, though the remainder may look quite dry.
   6. Shape the dough into a disk about 1″ thick, and refrigerate it for 30 minutes or longer; this resting period allows the flour to absorb the water, making the dough easier to roll out.
   7. When you’re “ready to roll,” remove the dough from the fridge. If the dough has been refrigerated longer than 30 minutes, let it rest at room temperature for 10 to 15 minutes before rolling, to allow the butter to soften up a bit.
   8. On a lightly floured board roll dough out to about 1/8 inch thickness. With a sharp knife, cut dough 1 1/2 inch larger than the upside-down 8- to 9-inch pie pan. Gently roll the dough around the rolling pin and transfer it right-side up onto the pie pan. Unroll, easing dough into the bottom of the pie pan.
   9. Flute edges (or however you want to decorate the edges) and refrigerate it while you prepare your filling. I turned the leftover dough into leaves and put them on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper.
3. Make the filling:
   1. After you take the pumpkin out of the oven turn it over with a fork and let it cool to the touch. (It can still be warm, you just don’t want to burn your hands.)
      1. Note: You can leave the oven on while the pumpkin cools. If you turn the oven off, you’ll need to turn it back on to 400 degrees when you start to scrap out the pumpkin flesh in the step blow.
   2. Once cool to the touch, scrap out the flesh. You need have at least four cups of flesh, if it is watery. I think some pumpkins are not as water, so if the flesh is not watery, you need three cups. For watery flesh, put the flesh in a strainer in the sink. Squeeze the water out of the flesh until you have three cups.
   3. Put the pumpkin flesh into a food processor or blender. (You can also use an immersion blender, but you need to put the ingredients in a large bowl.)
   4. Add the rest of pie filling ingredients to the food processor or blender: 1 can of evaporated milk, 3 eggs, ¾ cup packed brown sugar, ¼ cup maple syrup, spices (1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 teaspoon ginger, 1 teaspoon nutmeg and 1/2 teaspoon allspice or 3 teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice), and ½ teaspoon salt
   5. Process or blend the ingredients until smooth. You may need to scrap down the processor bowl or blender sides. I found this to be a time saving step.
4. Cooking the pie in 400 degree F oven
   1. Take the pie crust out of the refrigerator.
   2. Pour filling into the crust.
   3. Put the pie in the oven and bake 40 minutes. At 40 minutes, check to see if the filling has set, by inserting a knife in the middle. The knife will come out clean if the filling has set. (It took an hour for the pie I made to fully bake.)
   4. I also put the pie crust leaves in at the same time I put the pie into the oven. They took about 7-10 minutes to bake, but you should keep an eye on them, as they may bake faster.  Once they are as brown as you would like, take them out of the oven and let cool.
   5. If the crust edge has become brown before the filling has set, to prevent the edge from burning, you can take the pie out of the oven and wrap the pie edge with aluminum foil. It usually takes me three pieces. I like to shape the foil before putting in on the pie edge.
5. Once the pie is baked, let cool before putting the pie crust decorations on it or slicing the pie. If the pie is hot, cutting it will cause a mess, if pumpkin pie is like any other dessert pie I’ve made!

Note: If you have more pumpkin, you can use it to make something else. You’ll just need to puree it.

Cutting Out Leaves

• Gather the scraps of dough and rolled them out to the same thickness as a pie crust.

• Take a round cooking cutter and from the edge of the pie dough, put a quarter of the cookie cutter on the dough and cut.

• You will have this something similar to this shape:

• Next, take the shape you just cut out, and put the cookie cutter so you are cutting an opposite curve in the side that doesn’t have a curve.

• You now have a leaf shape.

• Take a paring knife and cut veins on the leaf by cutting about half way through the dough, so the veins will show after baking. Do not cut all the way through the dough, as that will make holes.
• You can move the cookie cutter in to make smaller leaves. You can see in the picture that I made leaves of different sizes.