Not Your Momma’s Pumpkin Pie

In honor of November and Thanksgiving Dessert looming in the near distance, I am going to be celebrating November Fridays as #FridayPieDay! Every Friday I will be sharing an exciting variation on different classic pies that are often served at Thanksgiving. I’m looking forward to making Salted Caramel Apple Pie, Spiced Pumpkin Pie, and Warrants Sweet Cherry Pie. Additionally, I do have plans for a Blueberry Rhubarb Bonus Pie, but that depends on if I can get Rhubarb. I hope you enjoy pies, because my friends and neighbor are going to be sick of it by the time I’m through with them! Sadly, I also promise to only make one or two bad Pi jokes throughout the process. But now, On to the Show!

Not Your Momma’s Pumpkin Pie

I love pumpkin pie. I love the texture of the custard, the flaky crust, and a generous helping of whipped cream. I’ve had some amazing pies in the past. I’ve also had ones that have been sad, and leave me wanting a better pie. Recently I was playing around with Hot Water Crusts to make little coffins for Halloween full of pumpkin pie and I made a terrible discovery. The problem I have with most pies is that they are not generous with the spices. Pumpkin is a gentle vegetable. It wants to play with others but it doesn’t suggest the game. This is why Pumpkin Spice (Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Clove, and AllSpice) is such a winning combination in fall drinks. But I’ve realized there is something missing from this. Spiced Pumpkin Pie is a Thanksgiving game-changer.

Spiced Pumpkin Pie

I’m not going to go into how to make a good pie crust today. There’s are so many different ways to do it. The important thing to do is blind bake the crust. To blind bake the crust all you have to do is stab little holes all around the bottom of the crust, cover it lightly with tin foil or parchment paper and fill it with pie weights, beans, or rice. You want the weights to fill the pie crust. My photo below does not have enough and it caused one of the sides to droop. Then slide this in the oven at 375 for 15 minutes. If your pie crust is frozen, I suggest baking for an extra 5-10 minutes. Remove the pie crust when it is starting to get brown. While your pie crust blind bakes, you can make your filling.

What I love about pumpkin pie custard is that I only need one bowl to clean it. I can throw everything into my mixer and whisk it up. Because pumpkin pie puree is realtively soft, I don’t even need my stand mixer. Today I used a vintage pyrex bowl and wisk.

Spices. This Spiced Pumpkin Pie uses Cinnamon (Standard), Nutmeg (standard), Clove (sometimes standard but sometimes not), Ginger, and Cardamon! Why do I use Cardamon and Clove? Because Clove is spice and gives this warmth to the dish. While Cardamon gives you this interesting sweet herbal note. The herbal notes take pumpkin’s hand and bring it to the party.

Pumpkin Pie is made for whipped cream. My favorite thing to do when making whipped cream is instead of using vanilla extract, I’ll use bourbon or rum to add extra flavor to the cream. For this Spiced Pumpkin Pie, I use bourbon and brown sugar (dark preferred but will use light if thats what I have). Brown Sugar adds molasses to the flavor which tastes great with the bourbon. Many people use powdered sugar to give whipped cream a smooth texture, but I find if you let the brown sugar sit in the heavy cream for about 10 minutes before whipping, it smooths out nicely.

Let me know in the comments below, what’s your favorite pie? What do you bring to Thanksgiving Dinner?

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