Pumpkin Pie Recipe

I love pumpkin pie! It’s one of my favourite treats. My little boy who turns his nose up at most vegetables love it also, and enjoys helping me make pumpkin pie!

Note – I use a food processor for a lot of the steps in this recipe, I don’t know how I’d manage without it, so if you don’t have a food processor, this recipe may not work out as well.

Ingredients

For the filling:

A whole medium butternut pumpkin (or approximately 2 cups of pumpkin puree)
A can of sweetened condensed milk
3 eggs
Mixed Spice
Vanilla Essence/extract
Powdered ginger

For the pastry:

1.5 cups of plain flour
250 gram block of butter
1 teaspoon of sugar
A few tablespoons of iced water

Slice up your pumpkin, lay it out on a tray and roast it in the oven for an hour at 180 deg. Checking on it towards the end of the hour, to be sure it isn’t burning. Turn the pumpkin once – don’t worry if it falls apart a bit.

While the pumpkin is roasting in the oven, make your pastry. You can also use store-bought short crust pastry for this, that’s perfectly fine, but pastry isn’t as hard as it looks!

Firstly cut up the butter – straight from the fridge – into small cubes, and place the butter and flour into the food processor and pulse a few times until it’s started to combine.

Next add iced water, a couple of tablespoons at a time, blending in short bursts. Mine took about 6 tablespoons of water, when it’s starting to form clumps test the dough by trying to roll a small portion into a ball. The dough is finished when it will roll into a small ball and hold together. Do not wait for the dough to form a ball in the food processor!

Empty out onto a lightly floured bench and form into a ball, with minimal handling. Wrap it up in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for about an hour (you can leave it longer, or prepare it the day before, however, it works out perfectly for me to make the dough while the pumpkin is roasting and cooling!)

Once the pumpkin is cooked, leave it on the bench to cool for about 15 minutes, until it’s no longer steaming hot. Place it in the food processor (FYI it’s a good idea to wash the food processor between making the pastry and the filling… just in case that’s not apparent…) Start to puree the pumpkin.

Now add the can of sweetened condensed milk and blend that through until smooth. (If your pumpkin is still warm, this is important, to help cool it even more before adding the eggs, however if the pumpkin has been cooled completely to room temperature, you can add the eggs in right away!)

Now add your eggs (if you haven’t already) and blend again!

And time for some spices! I use a generous teaspoon of mixed spice, a teaspoon of vanilla and a sprink of ginger, but you can adjust this to your own taste preference. If you don’t have mixed spice, you can use cinnamon, nutmeg and/or allspice. Blend it all up, continue until the mixture is completely smooth.

Get the pastry out of the fridge at this stage, and roll it out into a circle or rectangle, depending on the size and shape of your dish. Mine is  a 28cm across (and is 7cms deep.) You should probably use a rolling pin, but I don’t have one and find it’s perfectly fine to flatten out with my hands and then gradually push up the edges of the pan. You may want to pre-bake it at this stage, but I don’t, I like pumpkin pie base to be a bit squishy!

Then pour the pumpkin filling into the pastry, and sprinkle it lightly with some more mixed spice or cinnamon.

And bake for about 45 minutes, check on the pie after 40 minutes. The pie is cooked when the top is lightly browned, and it should be a bit jiggly, but firm to touch. You can also stick a tooth pick into the centre and if it comes out clean – you’re good to go!

Allow to cool, it can be served hot or warm, but I like it very chilled! (Heck I’ll eat it frozen!)