How to Cook a Pumpkin Pie from Scratch

This year we had a pumpkin left over from Halloween that had–alas–not been made into a jack-o-lantern. Well, I decided to make a pumpkin pie out of it for Thanksgiving. (Happily it did not spoil from October 31 to November 22.) I got the pumpkin in the pumpkin pie recipe online and the crust was something I found in Cooks Illustrated Baking Book.

Pumpkin Pie

Ingredients for Crust

1/3 cup ice water

3 tablespoons sour cream

2 1/2 cups flour

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

16 tablespoon stick butter (chop it up into 1/4 inch squares)

Ingredients for Pumpkin

1 medium sugar pumpkin

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch single crust pie

½ teaspoon ground ginger

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon salt

4 eggs, lightly beaten

1 cup honey, warmed slightly

½ cup milk

½ cup heavy whipping cream

Directions for Pie Filling and Crust

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Line a jelly roll pan with lightly oiled foil.
2. Cut pumpkin in half; remove seeds. Lightly oil the cut surface. Place cut-side down on the prepared pan.
3. Bake in the preheated oven until flesh is fork-tender, about 45 minutes. Cool until just warm. [I cooked the pumpkin 1 hour 15 minutes because it was a larger pumpkin than the recipe calls for.]
4. As the pumpkin bakes, make the crust. Step 1 of this is to mix the water and sour cream.
5. Mix the sugar, salt and flour from the crust recipe in a separate bowl.
6. Then take the butter and kneed it into the flour mixture.
7. Then pour into the butter-flour mixture the sour-cream-and-water.
8. Then take the dough and press it into a large pie dish. There will be some left over.
9. Then the pumpkin will come out of the oven.
10. Increase oven temperature to 400 degrees F ( 205 degrees C).
11. Scrape out pumpkin flesh. Mash flesh by hand in a bowl or purée in small batches in a blender.
12. Blend together 2 cups pumpkin purée, spices, and salt in a large bowl. Beat in eggs, honey, milk, and cream. Pour filling into pie shell.
13. Bake in the preheated oven until a knife inserted 1 inch from the edge of pie comes out clean, 50 to 55 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.
14. Just a thought: take left over pie dough flatten in a pie dish or metal tin. Powder with cinnamon and sugar. Put in oven for 30 minutes or so and then take out for an extra pastry. Eat warm. My Grandma Alderson made pie dough this way when I was a child.