In the days and weeks preceding Thanksgiving, every website that features food of any kind has a pumpkin pie recipe on it. The pictures are irresistible, of course. I can put on twenty pounds just looking at the pictures and thinking about how good it would taste!
Like so many of the recipes I post on here, this is my own version of one from an old issue of Better Homes & Gardens. When I say “old”, I mean it came from the fifties when I was first married. The photo above shows what is left of the original page, complete with old cellophane tape!
1 cup cooked or canned pumpkin
¾ cup sugar (these days I use Splenda instead of sugar)
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground cloves
3 slightly beaten eggs
1 cup evaporated milk (not condensed milk)
Combine pumpkin, sugar, salt, and spices. Add eggs and evaporated milk; blend. Pour into 9-inch pastry-lined pie pan. Bake in hot oven (450 F.) for 10 minutes. Then lower the temperature to 325 F. for about 45 minutes, or until the mixture doesn’t adhere to a knife stuck in the middle.
I’ve tried other recipes, but none have come close to this tried-and-true version. Most are not spicy enough for me, so even with this recipe, I add a bit more of the spices than it calls for. The original recipe calls for light cream or top milk, but I love the unique flavor the evaporated milk gives it.
Be sure to use the no-roll pie crust that I featured with my Cherry Crumb Pie and my Cran-Apple Crumb Pie. Please check out one or both of those posts to get the recipe and directions.
For pumpkin pie, I cover the fluted edge of the crust with strips of foil because this pie cooks longer than either of the fruit pies mentioned above. I take the strips off for about the last 10-15 minutes of cooking to let it brown.
Top with whipped cream, or some sort of whipped topping, and sprinkled with a bit of freshly grated nutmeg. A big dollop of vanilla bean ice cream on top is hard to beat! Good for more than just Thanksgiving!
Note: Just to show that everything can be modified, let me tell you about what happened while I was making this particular pie. First, I didn’t have any ground ginger, mostly because about all I ever use is fresh ginger. So I grated up some fresh ginger instead of using the powdered. Then the can of evaporated milk I had on the shelf was bad when I opened it. Instead of evaporated milk, I used ½ cup unflavored liquid coffee creamer and ½ cup Almond Breeze (vanilla, unsweetened). In other words, improvise, improvise, improvise! That’s the way we always did it in the fifties (and I still do)!
My hens were happy to donate their eggs for this Thanksgiving treat!
A hui hou!
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