Archive for the ‘pie’ Category

Saving some more pumpkin puree

13.1 years ago pie, pumpkin, recipe

 

WP_000852

I cooked up another pumpkin to make some more puree to last be though the rest of the year.  This time I used silicon liners which made the removal of the frozen pumpkin pucks a piece of cake.

Last year I made a delicious pumpkin pie with some of this puree, this year I decided to be a little more health conscious and used this recipe for a low carb, gluten free pumpkin pie.  Just as delicious, but with almost half the calories and none of the sugar/carb rush/

image

Making a pumpkin pie from scratch

14.1 years ago halloween, pie, pumpkin

020

While out picking out pumpkins for my daughters I saw some nice organic heirloom pumpkins (Winter Luxury Pie) and decided to try my hand in using a couple of these to make a pumpkin pie instead of using canned pumpkin.  One note make sure you are using a pumpkin labeled as a sugar or pie pumpkin, using your standard jack-o-lantern variety will lead to very watery and less velvety pie.  So in the end, not only does this give you a better tasting pie, but given a organic pumpkin cost $6 a can you also save quite a bit of money with just a little additional work.

034

Step 1: Clean the pumpkin. Use a little water and scouring pad to remove loose dirt

037

Step 2: Remove stem and cut pumpkin in half.  This will take a little muscle to get through but using a serrated blade should make quick work of this little pumpkin.

041

Step 3: Scoop out seeds and innards.  Using an ice cream scoop scrape out the seeds and the stringy innards, you don’t have to get this completely clean as you can see below.   I also decided to save a few seeds with hopes to grow my own sugar pumpkins next year using the seed saving techniques I have wrote about last year.

038

Step 4: Cut the pumpkin into smaller equally sized pieces.  Once you have all the seeds and gunk out slice up the pumpkin halves into several equally sized pieces.

045

Step 5: Cook the pumpkin.  Places pieces in a casserole dish and cover with top or if yours are overflowing your largest casserole dish like mine you can simply cover the dish with a piece of aluminum foil.  Place in a preheated oven at 350F and cook the pumpkin for 45-90 minutes.  The pumpkin is done cooking when you can slice through the pumpkin flesh with an edge of a fork with almost no effort.

047

Step 6: Blend.  Use a large metal spoon to scape the pumpkin away from the skin and place into a blender and blend until smooth.  If you have a very dry pumpkin like mine you might need to add a little water to get a good cortex going like above.

031

That is it.  With my 5 pound pumpkin I purchased for $5 I got 6 cups of pumpkin puree, which is enough to make 3 pumpkin pie or 6 loafs of pumpkin bread and if my math is right about $30 compared to buying the canned variety.  After making a pie and a loaf of pumpkin bread this left me with 3 cups of pumpkin goo, which I put in 6 half-cup containers which I froze to make some more pie for Thanksgiving.

Pumpkin Pie Recipe

058

Ingredients
  • 2 cups of pumpkin puree (see above)
  • 12 oz. can of evaporated milk
  • 1/2 cup of brown sugar
  • 1/3 cup of white sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 eggs + 1 egg yolk
  • 2 teaspoons cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon ginger
  • 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1/4 teaspoon cloves
  • 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
Directions
  1. Mix sugars, salt, spices, lemon into large bowl.  Beat in eggs then pumpkin puree.  Finally add the evaporated milk and whisk until thoroughly combined.
  2. Pour mixture into chilled pie shell and make at 425F for 15 minutes.  After 15 minutes reduce temperature to 350F.  Bake 45-50 minutes, or until a knife inserted near the center comes out clean.
  3. Cool on a wire rack for 2 hours
  4. Note: If you are lacking some of the spices above…you can replace the spices above with pumpkin pie spice.

Tags:

IKE