As you all know by now, I Love pumpkins! 😂 In fact, I love anything Autumn. The flavours, the foods and the colours. What better seasonal food is there than pumpkin? And the first thing that many think of, is pumpkin pie. I have always wanted to try pumpkin pie, but it was always something I had seen on American tv shows, and never in the UK. so when our homegrown pumpkins were ready, I gave it a go!

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I got a leaflet posted through the door from one of the local supermarkets and it had lots of recipes for Halloween food ideas, and pumpkin pie was on the list. The recipe was a little vague, and called for a small pumpkin, but not exact weights, so in the end I ended up with way to much mixture.

Ingredients

For the pastry:

• 200g of flour – I used plain even though the recipe didn’t specify
• 1.5tsp ground cinnamon
• 125g room temperature butter
• 2tbsp icing sugar

For the pie filling:

• 1 small pumpkin- looking back mine would probably have been classed as medium- so half of that would have been enough.
• 180g caster sugar
• 1/2 tsp of ground ginger
• 3 eggs- Again the recipe didn’t specify size. I assumed large, so I used 4 medium eggs.
• 200ml of double cream

Method

1. Before I started I prepared the pumpkin. I deseeded it and popped the top back on and roasted it, until it was soft and tender inside. I scooped out the flesh and blended it

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2. Leaving the oven on at 200c I prepared the pastry

3.To make the pastry, mix together the flour and cinnamon. Rub in the butter using your finger tips, to create what looks like breadcrumbs. Then stir in the icing sugar. Use around 6 tsp of water to make a dough.

Roll out the pastry to the size of your pie dish. Place in the dish, cut to size and pinch the edge. Chill for 15min.

4. Line the pastry with foil and bake blind for 8 minutes. Reduce the heat to 130C according to the recipe I followed, remove the foil and bake for a further 2-3 minutes.

(Now what I failed to do in the Recipe, was reduce the heat to 130C at the point where you put it back in for 2-3 minutes. If you do this the right way you will probably get some different results.)

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5. For the pie filling, put all the filling ingredients into a mixing bowl, and mix until smooth. I used an electric whisk. Then pour into pasty case and bake until filling is set. (If you turned down the heat this should take about 1hr. If like me you didn’t, keep a good eye on it).

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6. Let it cool and serve with cream! (As you can see by the last picture, my failure to turn down the heat ended up with a few burned patches, but it tasted delicious).

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Let us know if you try it, or if you’ve followed any other recipe. We’d love to see what you’ve made.

Stay safe and stay well.

Kiera & Tony