Pie!

As yesterday's blog was getting a bit lengthy, I decided to cut the pie stuff. But as you have all hung in there with me as I suffered through the challenge that baking presents, I couldn't deprive you of a great recipe that resulted in a (nearly) perfect pie.

I made the pie the day before Thanksgiving, as I didn't want to pile the entire feast on one day and then kill myself. Taking a deep breath, I did something I have never done successfully before. I made my own crust. I have rolling issues every time I try something like this, I always end up thin on one side and thick on the other, with an oval instead of a rectangle, with the dough either cracking like crazy for being too dry, or gluing itself to my rolling pin for being too moist. Frustration mounts, curse words fly, and a frozen crust comes out of my freezer...then possibly more curse words.

Bracing myself I found a simple butter crust recipe, one that involved the usual suspects of flour, water, sugar and salt, and threw them in my food processor. (Side note: if I didn't own a processor I would probably never try this. Hand mixing dough looks like the worst idea ever, and I am far too lazy for that) The ingredients mixed just like the recipe said they should, I refrigerated the disk for an hour, and then got rolling. Okay, it wasn't the prettiest crust in all of human history, but for right now I was happy it didn't end up in a gooey mess in my trash can. If it tastes good, awesome. I'll work on my baking aesthetics later. Since the filling recipe I used calls for a frozen crust, I stuck the pie plate with the homemade crust into the freezer to chill it. The pie filling is super easy. The original recipe calls for light molasses, but I had dark and it worked just fine. Either will probably do. Also, I did end up with extra filling. If you have a deep dish pie plate I would use it, or if you have little tart pans you could make smaller pies. I may or may not have thrown out the extra, like a lazy, wasteful, worthless American. God bless this holiday.

Spiced Pumpkin Pie

Adapted from Bon Appetit

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons all purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 1/2 cups canned solid pack pumpkin
• 2 tablespoons molasses
• 4 large eggs
• 1 cup whipping cream

Directions:

Place baking sheet in oven and preheat to 450°F. Whisk first 8 ingredients together in large bowl to blend. Whisk in pumpkin, molasses and eggs, then cream. Pour mixture into crust.

Place pie on preheated baking sheet in oven. Bake 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 325°F and bake until sides puff and center is just set, about 40 minutes. Cool. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and re-frigerate.) Serve at room temperature.

The pie was like 90% perfect, or some such percentage. It looked all nice and set and puffed when I took it out of the oven, but ten minutes later the center fell and I ended up with quite the dent in my pie. Probably could have left it in the oven a tiny bit longer. It's an extremely tasty pie, however, with more spice then pumpkin on the palate. See above note for my feelings about taste over aesthetics. I felt my dented pie had character.