Pumpkin Pie #3

Our third pumpkin pie recipe comes from The Amish & Dutch Cookbook. As a refresher for our minds, this cookbook shares recipes from restaurants in the “dutchy” part of Pennsylvania (or, like, all of it!). Some of the recipes, like the Lebkuchen, include enough ingredients to make large batches of a recipe, but this recipe hardly included enough for one! As a reminder, here is the comparison chart:

Recipe	Filling	Crust	Ease of Prep	Overall
New England	5	5	8	18
Pilgrim – Pies	7	7	4	18
Amish 1
Chiffon – Pies
Amish – 2

Pumpkin Pie

The book DOES NOT include a crust recipe for this pie, so I just made a standard one on my own.

2 eggs

1 C pumpkin

1 C milk

¾ C sugar

½ tsp salt

1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

1 tbsp cornstarch

butter (size of a walnut), melted

Yeah, that’s the real official ingredient list. Since “walnut-sized” felt a little too vague for me, I used 1 ½ tbsp of melted butter. Additionally, I don’t have a shaker of “pumpkin pie spice” in my cabinet, so instead I mixed nutmeg, allspice, ginger, and cinnamon together (I actually wound up putting in around 2-3 tsp of spices total).

Beat eggs slightly, add other ingredients and melted butter.

That’s it. I’m not kidding. That is word-for-word from the book. No crust recipe. No baking temperature or length of time for baking. Flying almost blind, I used what I knew about the other pumpkin pies and baked this at 350^oF for 1 ¼ hrs.

The pie came out okay, and we still ate it (again, I think you have to TRY to ruin a pumpkin pie), but it was not nearly as much fun as baking some of the other recipes. Additionally, because of the lack of instruction and strange ingredient list, the filling wound up with that strange cracked appearance on top, which does not look nearly as appetizing as the other pies.

As far as scoring, I will give this recipe a 5/10 for filling because, even though the ingredient list was not as thorough as I would have liked, the flavor of the filling was about average. I have to give a 0/10 for the crust because there was no crust recipe! And I will give this a 4/10 for ease of prep because I had to do A LOT of guess-timating. That brings this total score to a sad little 9. Better luck next time, Amish & Dutch Cookbook!

Recipe	Filling	Crust	Ease of Prep	Overall
New England	5	5	8	18
Pilgrim – Pies	7	7	4	18
Amish 1	5	0	4	9
Chiffon – Pies
Amish – 2

Have a question or a request? Put it in the comments below and I’ll be sure to respond. Fröhe essen!

(Pilgrim) Pumpkin Pie #2

For those of you who celebrate, Merry Christmas Eve!

For the second pumpkin pie, I turn to a cookbook that, unfortunately due to its antique nature, has lost its front and back covers (and first few and last pages). Ergo, I will call the book The Pie Cookbook for lack of a better title (and because it is FULL of recipes for pies). Just as a reminder, here is the comparison chart:

Recipe	Filling	Crust	Ease of Prep	Overall
New England	5	5	8	18
Pilgrim – Pies
Amish 1
Chiffon – Pies
Amish – 2

Pilgrim Pumpkin Pie

Crust – Easy Flaky Pastry

2 ¼ C flour

1 tsp salt

¾ C shortening (NOT butter or margarine)

5 tbsp cold water

Mix dry ingredients together, then cut in shortening. Add just enough water to mix to hold pastry together.

Although normally you would only need a half-version of this recipe in order to make a 1-crust pie, I made the whole recipe because I wanted to share this with friends. Rather than creating one large pumpkin pie with slices, I instead rolled out the dough and cut it into small circles to fit in my muffin tins to make pumpkin tarts! Also, for this recipe, instead of baking the crust first, you refrigerate it for a few hours, then pour in the filling and bake all at once.

Filling

1 ¾ C pumpking

¾ C brown sugar

¾ tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp ginger

½ tsp nutmeg

1 C evaporated milk

½ C water

1 tbsp brandy (optional)

2 eggs, beaten

Heat pumpkin over low heat for 10 minutes, stirring often, to dry out slightly. Combine sugar, salt, and spices, then stir into pumpkin. Remove pumpkin from heat and add milk and water. Slowly and carefully add pumpkin mixture to eggs, being sure to temper. Push mixture through fine strainer to catch any lumps of pumpkin or egg.

Pour filling into shell. Bake at 450^oF for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 300^oF and bake for 45 minutes or until done. I slightly adjusted the baking times for my 24 pumpkin tarts: 10 minutes at 450^oF and 40 minutes at 300^oF.

These turned out really great! They were very cute, and my friends seemed to enjoy them. We could actually taste the amount of salt in the pastry and the filling, but that turned out to be a nice contrast to the sweetness of the pie. The flavor of the filling was really good, especially with the salt, so I’ll score it as 7/10. This particular crust turned out quite flaky and nice, very light and perfect for the tarts, so I’ll give it a 7/10. Unfortunately, heating the pumpkin and tempering the egg cause the Ease of Prep score for this particular pie to drop to a 4. Overall, that gives it a tie score with the New England recipe.

Recipe	Filling	Crust	Ease of Prep	Overall
New England	5	5	8	18
Pilgrim – Pies	7	7	4	18
Amish 1
Chiffon – Pies
Amish – 2

Have a question or a request? Put it in the comments below and I’ll be sure to respond. Fröhe essen!

Pumpkin Pie #1

I hope everyone enjoyed their Winter Solstice yesterday!

For the last 5 posts of 2014, I will be doing a big holiday comparison! What could possibly be more festive than pumpkin pie? It’s a true American tradition to have pumpkin pie during the holidays, and I personally enjoy the spicy-sweet flavor of this gourd-geous dessert.

As with the strudel, I find myself possessed of not one, not two, but FIVE different pumpkin pie recipes spread across the recipe books. Here is the comparison chart:

Recipe	Filling	Crust	Ease of Prep	Overall
New England
Pilgrim – Pies
Amish 1
Chiffon – Pies
Amish – 2

Pumpkin Pie – The New England Cookbook

Crust

1 C flour

½ tsp salt

1/3 C shortening

2 ½ tbsp cold water

Mix dry ingredients together, then cut in shortening. Add only enough water to hold pastry together. Roll out into a thin circle and gently fit into pie pan. Flute edges of pastry. Prick sides and bottom of crust with a fork. Bake empty crust at 450^oF for 10 minutes and set aside to cool.

Pie

2 C pumpkin

2/3 C brown sugar

½ tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp ginger

½ tsp nutmeg

1/8 tsp cloves

2 eggs, beaten

1 C cream

Mix together pumpkin, sugar and spices.

Blend in eggs and cream until smooth.

Pour mixture into pastry shell.

Bake at 350oF for 50 to 60 minutes or until done. Remove from oven and allow to cool.

We served this with simple whipped cream or powdered sugar on top and mugs of milk or eggnog on the side. The pie was quite tasty – I’m pretty sure you can’t screw up a pumpkin pie unless you try. The filling was very simple. While simplicity is nice, I’ll give the filling for this recipe a 5/10. The crust was also very simple, pretty average, so I will score it with a 5/10 as well. Because it was so simple, this pie recipe was incredibly easy to prepare, so I give it an 8/10. Overall, the pumpkin pie recipe from The New England Cookbook scores an 18!

Recipe	Filling	Crust	Ease of Prep	Overall
New England	5	5	8	18
Pilgrim – Pies
Amish 1
Chiffon – Pies
Amish – 2

Have a question or a request? Put it in the comments below and I’ll be sure to respond. Fröhe essen!