Homemade Pumpkin Pie

Crust and Pumpkin Pie Filling Recipe

Crust Recipe:

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 stick unsalted butter, very-cold, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
• 3 to 4 Tbsp ice water, very cold

Crust Instructions:

• Mix all the dry ingredients in your food processor
• Add butter to processor and mix until tiny butter chunks still exist
• Add a little water at a time to processor until you can squish the mixture between your fingers and it sticks
• Pour flour on a clean lightly flourered surface and roll mixture into a ball using your palms and then plastic wrap.
• Place ball into refrigerator for at least 1 hour
• Roll out ball on a clean flat surface, using a little flour so it will not stick
• When the crust is about 1/4-1/2 mm thick, place on and flatten into your 9 inch glass pie dish

Pie Filling Recipe:

• 2 cups of homemade (or canned) pumpkin purée*
• 1 cup evaporated light vanilla silk soy milk (or milk, coconut milk, or condensced milk)**
• 1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs plus the yolk of a third egg
• 2 teaspoons of cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 3/4 teaspoon garam masala (I used this to replace 1/4 nutmeg, 1/4 cloves, and 1/4 cardamom)

 *I made my pumpkin purée from a small sugar pumpkin bought at a regular grocery store.  As the pictures show you below, I cut the pumpkin in half and scrapped the seeds and strings out.  I cooked my pumpkin halves with my pressure cooked.  This only takes 5 minutes.  Place a few inches of water in the bottom of the pressure cooker, put in pumpkin, cover pressure cooker, heat until you hear the whistle, reduce heat to medium, go for 5 minutes, turn off pressure cooker and let cool.  Remove pumpkin and scrape the purée.

**Because I only had light vanilla silk soy milk on hand, I made my own evaporated milk.  I took 3 cups of soy milk and brought to a boil in saucer; I reduced the heat to medium and then let the soy milk reduce half way.  Turn off heat and add as much sugar as you like, sweeten to taste (approximately 1/2 cup to 1 cup white sugar).  It is probably easier to just buy a can of evaporated milk (99 cents at regular grocery store).

Pie Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 425 degrees
• Mix sugars, salt, spices, beaten eggs, pumpkin purée, evaporated soy milk in a big bowl. Whisk all nicely together.
• Fill your pie crust
• Bake pie at 425 degree for 15 minutes
• Reduce temperature to 350 degrees and bake for 60-65 minutes (or until a knife in the middle comes out clean)
• Cool for at least 2 hours; the filling will proceed to harden as it cools

Pictures for Above Process

Crust Mixture

Crust wrapped in plastic

Sugar pumpkin before pressure cooker

Sugar pumpkin after pressure cooker ready to scrape

Two cups pumpkin purée

Perfect evaporated soy consistency with white sugar

Reducing the soy milk

Dry Ingredients mixed together

Dry ingredients with wet ingredients

Ready to roll out my crust (btw, I used the snoopy H2O bottle below to roll my crust...trick of the trade)

Pie pre-bake 

Pie post-bake

~Final words of advice: dollop with cool whip and serve! :)  Best pumpkin pie I have ever had!