First Pumpkin Pie of the Season

Sunflower was having a wicked sale on pie pumpkins, so I stocked up on my last trip to Santa Fe. Needless to say, I am now inundated with mashed pumpkin! I pretty much love anything pumpkin, but pumpkin pie is definitely one of my favorites.

There are two places in Cincinnati that make incredible pumpkin pies: Frisch's Restaurants and Kroger's grocery stores. Kroger's is actually the parent company of Smith's, so Smith's might have amazing pumpkin pies too, although they never look nearly as good as the pies in Kroger's do.

My only gripe about most pumpkin pie is that I'm not a big pie crust fan. I know Scott is appalled by this, since he makes a pretty damn good pie crust! I like it, but I don't love it. I would prefer to just eat the pie filling, and leave the crust behind. So, I needed something besides Crisco to make a pie crust with! I settled on a graham cracker crust, which is always a good fallback.

The dough for homemade graham crackers is best if made the night before. I completely forgot about making the dough since we headed into town for the Halloween festivities, so I needed to come up with another idea. The Los Alamos Co-op recently had Annie's brand Bunny Grahams on sale, and I had purchased both chocolate and cinnamon bunny grahams. I figured the cinnamon ones would make a great crust, until I learned that someone had eaten all of them!! (For the record, it wasn't me...)

So chocolate bunny grahams would have to do. I also remembered that we had some crystallized ginger cookies in the pantry, so I figured I'd throw some of those in as well. I put about half a bag of chocolate bunny grahams and 4 cookies in a Ziploc bag and proceeded to mash them to pieces. I always feel bad mashing up the little bunnies though, it seems a bit cruel.

Once I was done with the mashing, I melted about 5 tbsp of butter in a mixing bowl and added about 1/3 cup of sugar (again, my baking is extremely inexact!). I mixed it all together, and then pressed the crumbs into a pie pan. I baked the crust for about 7 minutes at 350 degrees.

The traditional way of making a pumpkin pie is using pureed pumpkin, evaporated milk, and sugar, plus some other seasonings. The Los Alamos co-op only carries organic sweetened condensed milk, not evaporated milk, so I figured I'd give the sweetened condensed milk a try - it would require eliminating any added sugar though, since sweetened condensed milk is basically evaporated milk with sugar added. The recipes for pumpkin pie with sweetened condensed milk are fairly uncommon...I ended up using Eagle Brand's recipe, found here: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/perfect-pumpkin-pie/detail.aspx

I cooked the pie at 425 for 15 minutes, and then turned the oven temperature down to 350 for another 30 minutes (as the recipe instructed). I think the higher initial baking temperature is key for 'setting' the pie. The recipe said to bake for 35-45 minutes at 350, but I found that 30 minutes would about right...any more time, and it might have started burning. In fact, the edge of the crust started getting a little brown, but never really burned.

I was really amazed that the pie ended up with no cracks, even after cooling. It did puff up a bit while baking, so I assumed it would crack once cooled, but it stayed nice and smooth on top (except for my one little knife poke to check doneness, boo). Overall, the flavor was delicious! Very pumpkin-y, and the crust was a great complement to the pumpkin flavors. I think the sweetened condensed milk helped make the pie creamy, without making it overly sweet. I will definitely be replacing evaporated milk and sugar with sweetened condensed milk in any future pumpkin pies.

No cracks! The crust looks a little burnt, but it actually turned out okay

One other thing that I will be sure to do next time I make a pumpkin pie is to do it at least one day before I want to enjoy it. I think that letting it chill in the fridge overnight made a huge difference with the consistency of the crust. By allowing the pie to completely cool, I think it softened up the crust a little bit, so that it was a more continuous bite through the pie, rather than a bit of filling and a bit of crust with each bite. I will definitely be making this one again!