So we bought some pumpkins from Mrs Piper’s niece and nephews, who grow their own vegetables on the farm. They’re little ones, about 5 " diameter, not big jack o’lantern ones.
I want to make a pumpkin pie from scratch with them. Does anyone have a recipe for converting pumpkins into pumpkin pie filling?
Also, they’re not completely orange yet - still some flecks of green. Do I have to wait until they’re orange all over?
Any tips and encouragement would be appreciated.
:o :o :o :o :o :o
(That’s a row of little pumpkins, waiting to be pied.)
I’ve made a few from start to finish…cutting up the pumpkin, baking the pieces, making the crust, making the filling and baking it.
First piece of advice…make sure you buy a cooking pumpkin, not a carving pumpkin. They don’t look remotely alike and that orange color you’re expecting won’t be there unless you add food coloring. The taste isn’t very much different than it would be if you started with canned pumpkin. But I liked doing it.
Like wonder9 says, you just need to bake the pumpkin first. Cut it open, remove the seeds, and throw it in the over at, say, 350 for an hour or so until it’s soft. Remove the skin, squoosh the stuff, and you have pumpkin for pies.
I also agree with wonder that it doesn’t make a lick of difference in the pie. It’s a lot of extra work for no reward. For what it’s worth, I made pies from scratch for years - my whole life, really, since my mother did it that way, too. And then I used the canned stuff once and never went back.
I made a pumpkin pie from scratch once - while living in Berlin and with the help of another American living there.
Took forever, was a pain in the ass to make and ate the damned things in about five minutes.
My tip - buy Mrs. Smith’s and be done with it.
However, if you insist…Joy Of Cooking has step-by-step directions with a decent recipe to boot…as long as you have a few hours to kill and enjoy painstaking effort, knock yourself out and party-hearty. The pumpkin pie I made from scratch in Berlin was my first, and last.
My daughter makes pumpkin pies from scratch–we find them wonderful. The texture is much coarser and the taste deeper than pies made with canned pumpkin. It took her a couple of years of experimenting with various pumpkins, ways of cooking the pumpkin flesh and how much to mash it. I can ask her for information this weekend if you’d like.
I can’t give you any special tips about getting the pumpkin ready, but I can tell you three things that help make my pie the one all my friends say kicks complete ass, even the friends who hate pumpkin pie.
The crust. Dont’ use pre-made. Yuck. Crust is really not that difficult. But whatever you use. brush the bottom crust throoughly and completely with a fairly thick coating of egg white, then pop in the freezer for about 10 minutes. This has the effect of preventing the pumpkin filling from soaking the crust and making it soggy. A huge difference.
Less suger. Most pumpkin pies are way too sweet.
More spice. Lots of spice.
My secret killer topping…which I can’t tell you about. Sorry. But I will say it involves butter and pecans and brown sugar and sour cream…
)