Pumpkin

When someone mentions Thanksgiving what are the first things that come to mind?  Turkey?  Stuffing? Pumpkin Pie?  I have been trying to make a good Pumpkin Pie for three years now... and this is the closest I have ever come to success.  I don't understand why I have such a hard time with this pie!  I take that back... I do have a pretty good idea; and it actually isn't entirely my fault.  Let's start at the beginning though... the crust.

Having learned from my mistake with the Peach Pie I was careful to incorporate my water into the crust using a SPATULA.

That's right, it is possible to teach an old dog new tricks... or at least remind them of tricks they used to know and foolishly decided to ignore for a little while.  With the water incorporated I formed my dough ball and cut it in half.  Here is my Pumpkin Pie crust ball...

Now compare that to my Peach Pie crust ball...

BIG difference!!!  The Pumpkin crust still has butter pockets, (vital for the flakiness of the crust) the Peach pie does not.  Feeling very proud of myself I proceeded to roll out my dough.  Let me tell you, having well behaved dough can work miracles.  The dough rolled out without a problem into a nice large flat sheet...

And then I was easily able to transfer it into the pan to create this lovely image...

Oh the beauty of a well made pie crust...  Time for the pumpkin filling, and all of my troubles with this pie.

Before I start talking about the pumpkin at all let me get the sugar/spice mixture out of the way.  This mixture is as simple as all the others: brown sugar, two eggs, cinnamon, ground ginger, salt, cloves, and nutmeg.  So maybe it has a few more ingredients than usual... But hey, I can handle that.  Mixing the sugar and spices went off without a hitch.

Now the pumpkin puree that I was supposed to add to that... A little more difficult.

Did you know that Pumpkin Pies don't always have to be made with pumpkin?  Squash is actually a perfectly fine substitute, and so squash is what I used.  Now every time I have ever made a Pumpkin Pie I have used one of my mom's pumpkins (or squash) to make fresh pumpkin puree.  The problem is that no matter how many times I try doing this it always ends up having more liquid in it than it should.  This time I was using a puree that my mom had made a few weeks ago and then frozen.  I started on the difficult job of heating this frozen puree, and getting some of the liquid out of it.  I ended up with this:

That's decent looking puree... The other problem with using fresh puree is that the stringiness of the pumpkin (or squash) is still there.  I tried to use a blender to cut all that up... But in the end I found out that I had unfortunately missed a bit.  Despite all that I went ahead and mixed my sugar mixture with my eggs, added that to my puree, and added to that the heavy cream the recipe called for.  My filling was ready...

I had done a fairly good job with the filling.  It didn't have too much liquid (for once) and so the only real problem with it was that it was too stringy... Oh, and I didn't quite have enough of it.  I had underestimated you much pumpkin (excuse me, squash) puree I would need and so I did not quite have enough filling for the two pies I had intended to make.  It was a bit of a dilemma.  Two pie crusts, and enough filling for one and a half pies...  So I just made do with what I had.  I just didn't completely fill either pie crust.  It worked out in the end, even it there was too much crust for a small amount of filling.

So there it is... My successful "Pumpkin" Pie.  The only real problems with this one would be that it was till a bit stringy, and I didn't have enough filling.  Other than that it tasted great!  I think next time I'll just go ahead and try a store-bought puree.