Fall is probably my favorite season. I like the weather: warm without being unbearably hot, cool without being middle of the winter cold. I like the food: hearty soups and stews, warm breads, and apple pie. I like the colors as the leaves turn: bright yellow, rusty read and deep orange.
I’ve talked a little about apples and how much I like to bake them, but I also want to take a minute to appreciate another fall staple: the pumpkin. I like a lot of pumpkin baked goods – pumpkin bread, pumpkin rolls, pumpkin muffins, all of it is so good. The only thing is, I’ve always made my pumpkin baked goods with canned pumpkin.
Now don’t get me wrong, canned pumpkin is fantastic. It’s pre-measured, prepared and, so long as you get a good brand, tastes great. But as someone who likes making their life much more difficult than it needs to be, I’ve always been curious what it would be like to make something with fresh pumpkin. So this year I went out and got some pie pumpkins to try my hand at making a pumpkin pie from scratch!
The first step was getting my hands on some pie, or sugar, pumpkins, smaller than the usual pumpkins you see put out for porch displays. Once I had two small ones I wiped them down, split them in half and scooped out all the seeds from the inside. Following instructions I found online I roasted the halved pumpkins in the oven at 350 degrees for roughly 45 minutes, or until a fork stuck in them went in easily.
From there it was a bit tricky as I wanted to pull the skin off the pumpkin while it was still warm but also didn’t want to burn my fingers off. With a little ingenuity and more than a little hot potato-ing I eventually got the skins off and roughly mashed the pumpkins while they were warm.
Once that was done I popped the pumpkin into the fridge as it was late at night and left the pumpkin to finish cooling.
The next day I pulled the pumpkin back out and, since it was really just a rough mash I did the night before, I used an immersion blender to finely blend the pumpkin to a smoother consistency. Once the pumpkin puree was done, it was on to the pie.
The actual pie process was pretty familiar: I’ve made plenty of pies so I whipped up a simple crust (though I should have made a little more of it, the recipe I had said it was for a nine inch pie plate but something about the ceramic pie pan we have just doesn’t work with conventional pie dough measurements. Maybe the pan is a little deeper or wider than average, but either way you can probably see the pie crust shortage in the photo.) and then worked on a filling. I opted to use a recipe which had heavy cream rather than evaporated milk for the filling, if only because I thought it would be just a little bit healthier.
As far as you can make a pie healthy, that is.
The pumpkin had been well blended by the immersion blender so it was a cinch to mix it into the rest of the filling and then pour it all into the waiting crust. I popped the pie into the oven and after that it was just a waiting game. Or knitting game, since I then spent the hour+ the pie took to bake working on projects. I had to extend the time for the pie by around twenty-five minutes because the first time I checked the pie the center wobbled like a pot of soup and I knew it wasn’t set. That started off the task of setting the timer for ten minutes, checking if the pie had finished, then adding five minute timers so as to not over-shoot. Finally, the center of the pie was set so that when I checked it with a toothpick the toothpick came out clean.
Then came the final step: the taste test. I had relatively simple expectations. I’m not going to think that somehow making a pie from scratch would make it ten times better than store bought (though it can, trust me) or a pie made with canned pumpkin. The main question was, did I like how it turned out well enough that I would go through the whole process again?
The verdict? While I liked how the pie came out, I’m not sure if the difference was large enough that I would make it a priority to make my own pumpkin puree for baking going forward. I liked the pie. I think the spices I used didn’t match my personal taste (the norm when you try a new recipe) but I liked the taste of the pumpkin in the pie. I liked the consistency of the pie, it was smooth and light. I think I didn’t pair the crust well with the filling, but that’s an easy fix going forward. Maybe if I have the time I’ll make my own pumpkin puree, but otherwise, having satisfied my curiosity, I think leaving my pumpkin needs up to the can is good enough for me.
