Pumpkin Pie. All my childhood memories of Pumpkin Pie are from Thanksgiving. My Mom loved to bake. Today, that is easy to say, I mean I have the help of my Kitchenaid mixer, my Breadmaker which I use mostly to mix the doughs. Back to my Mom, she made bread and baked and it was an all day affair. First off, she only had one oven. It was a big oven and two pies would fit on one rack. Our table consisted of a sheet of 3/4 inch plywood. For you non-construction types, that would be 4 feet by 8 feet. All eleven of us would sit down daily to dinner. One that same table, a few days before a holiday my Mom would start baking bread and pies and such.   I remember my eyes were just above table height and looking over all the goodies. It felt like they would go out past my horizon!  Mom made things by two’s; she must have liked the story of the ark. We had two apple, two cherry, two lemon meringue. And yes, back to Pumpkin. That is what you want to know about. Mom was a better than average baker, and she could combine the right amount of flavors to make the tastes pop. I always hoped I would inherit her taste buds.
But, if you know me, I like to adjust things to my liking and keep them easy as well.
While you can look at the back of a can of pumpkin and make the pie, I do believe you can do better. Within the last couple of years I have been playing with Indian spices and one of my favorite spices is Garam Masala.  Many pies are over loaded with cloves and nutmeg – stop already. Pumpkin pie has to have balance. This pie has a perfect blend of spice, just right!
1 1/2 c white sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp garam masala
4 large eggs
1 can (29 oz) Libby’s Pure Pumpkin
2 cans (12 oz) Carnation Evaporated Milk
2 unbaked 9 inch pie shells. I used two tart dishes and filled them to their rims with pumpkin. But you can also use deep dish pie pans. I also took the left over pie crust and made leaves to decorate the top -this is my Mother in me. Make it taste good, and make it pretty. Use egg wash and brush the leaves before baking in the oven for about 15 minutes. You can also sprinkle with white sugar to make them sparkle. Like adding a diamond to a ring!
Mix all together and pour into the unbaked pie shells.
Preheat oven at 425, then reduce heat to 350 , bake for 40-50 minutes until knife inserted near center comes out clean.
Beef Stew Filling
Chop Beef into bite size pieces
1 diced onion
6 celery stocks diced
6 carrots sliced into coins
1 cup diced potatoes (optional)
Saute onion, celery and carrots
48 ounces beef stock
1/2 cup brewed coffee
1/4 cup teriyaki sauce
1 can green peas
1 tsp Thyme
Salt & Pepper to taste
Let ingredients simmer until vegetables are fork tender, add peas after other vegetables are done. Remove from heat.
Crust
3 Cups Flour
1 Cup Crisco
1 T Baking Powder
1 tsp Salt
6-8 T Cold Water as needed
Blend together, roll out, top on individual pot pies or one large pie over beef stew filling.
So what could my mom do with her canned peaches? Everything or nothing, they were always great. This tart is equally good with tart apples, pears, plums, or berries, apricots or yes – peaches.  Even combining fruits would be great.  The crust has an appealing cookie-like texture. The almond cream  was amazingly smooth and flavorful. Almond flavor is always good with fruit. They combine well, and enhance each other.  I did add both rum and vanilla to flavor it. I like food to look beautiful, but not fussed over, so rustic always is more appealing to me.  Adapted from Baking: From My Home to Yours Dorie Greenspan, but I am sure my Mother had a similar recipe.
For the almond cream:
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup sugar
3/4 cup ground blanched almonds
2 teaspoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 large egg
2 teaspoons dark rum
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 partially-baked 9-inch tart shell, made with Sweet Tart Dough (see below), at room temperature
1 can of canned peach halves
Confectioners’ sugar for dusting, or apple jelly for glazing
To make the almond cream: Put the butter and sugar in the workbowl of a food processor and process until the mixture is smooth and satiny. Add the ground almonds and continue to process until well blended. Add the flour and cornstarch, process, and then add the egg. Process for about 15 seconds more, or until the almond cream is homogeneous. Add the rum or vanilla and process just to blend. If you prefer, you can make the cream in a mixer fitted with the whisk attachment or in a bowl with a rubber spatula. In either case, the ingredients are added in the same order. Scrape the almond cream into a container and either use it immediately or refrigerate it until firm, about 2 hours.
Getting ready to bake: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Have a lined baking sheet at the ready. Cut the peaches in half from blossom to stem (or pieces). Whatever fruit you have, make sure to pat them dry – really dry – so that their liquid won’t keep the almond cream from baking.
Fill the baked crust with the almond cream, spreading it even with an offset metal icing spatula. Thinly slice each pear half crosswise, lift each half on a spatula, press down on the pear to fan it slightly and place it, wide-end toward the edge of the crust, over the almond cream. The halves will form spokes.
Put the crust on the lined baking sheet, slide the sheet into the oven and bake the tart 50 to 60 minutes, or until the almond cream puffs up around the pears and browns. Transfer the tart to a rack to cool to just warm or to room temperature before unmolding.
Right before serving, dust the tart with confectioners’ sugar. If you prefer, prepare a glaze by bringing about 1/4 cup apple jelly and1/2 teaspoon water to the boil. Brush the glaze over the surface of the tart.
Serving:Â This tart goes very well with aromatic tea.
Storing: If it’s convenient for you, you can make the almond cream up to 2 days ahead and keep it closely covered in the refrigerator, or you can wrap it airtight and freeze it for up to 2 months; defrost before using. You can also poach the pears up to 1 day ahead. However, once you’ve baked the tart, you should be prepared to enjoy it that same day.
Playing around: The almond cream is a great companion for a variety of fruits. It’s as good with summer fruits, like apricots or peaches, as it is with autumn’s apples.
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick plus 1 tablespoon (4 1/2 ounces) very cold (or frozen) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 large egg yolk
To make the dough: Put the flour, confectioners’ sugar and salt in the workbowl of a food processor and pulse a couple of times to combine. Scatter the pieces of butter over the dry ingredients and pulse until the butter is cut in coarsely – you’ll have pieces the size of oatmeal flakes and pea-size pieces and that’s just fine. Stir the egg, just to break it up, and add it a little at a time, pulsing after each addition. When the egg is in, process in long pulses – about 10 seconds each – until the dough, which will look granular soon after the egg is added, forms clumps and curds. Just before your reaches this clumpy stage, the sound of the machine working the dough will change – heads up. Turn the dough out onto a work surface.
Very lightly and sparingly – make that very, very lightly and sparingly – knead the dough just to incorporate any dry ingredients that might have escaped mixing.
If you want to press the dough into a tart pan, now is the time to do it.
If you want to chill the dough and roll it out later (doable, but fussier than pressing), gather the dough into a ball (you might have to use a little more pressure than you used to mix in dry bits, because you do want the ball to be just this side of cohesive), flatten it into a disk, wrap it well and chill it for at least 2 hours or for up to 1 day.
To make a press-in crust: Butter the tart pan and press the dough evenly along the bottom and up the sides of the pan. Don’t be stingy – you want a crust with a little heft because you want to be able to both taste and feel it. Also, don’t be too heavy-handed – you want to press the crust in so that the pieces cling to one another and knit together when baked, but you don’t want to press so hard that the crust loses its crumbly shortbreadish texture. Freeze the crust for at least 30 minutes, preferably longer, before baking.
To make a rolled-out crust: This dough is very soft – a combination of a substantial amount of butter and the use of confectioners’ sugar – so I find it is easier to roll it between wax paper or plastic wrap or, easiest of all, in a roll-out-your-dough slipcover. If you use the slipcover, flour it lightly. Roll the dough out evenly, turning the dough over frequently and lifting the wax paper or plastic wrap often, so that it doesn’t roll into the dough and form creases. If you’ve got time, slide the rolled out dough into the fridge to rest and firm for about 20 minutes before fitting the dough into the buttered tart pan. Trim the excess dough even with the edge of the pan. Freeze the crust for at least 30 minutes, preferably longer, before baking.
To partially bake the crust: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Butter the shiny side of a piece of aluminum foil and fit the foil tightly against the crust. Bake the crust 25 minutes, then carefully remove the foil. If the crust has puffed, press it down gently with the back of a spoon. Bake for another 3 to 5 minutes, then transfer the crust to a cooling rack; keep it in its pan.
At Christmas this year, my sister-in-law, Carol made the pies. She has shared her mom’s Lemon Cream Pie recipe. “My mom’s pie had meringue on top made from the whites of the 3 egg yolks. Many recipes today suggest whipped cream. All sound yummy. For the crust I use the Pillsbury and roll it out a little. Use a small pie tin as this is not a big pie. Doubling recipes doesn’t work for me. I just prick the crust with a fork several times, then pre-bake the crust. I don’t think Meyer lemons are good for this…not enough acidity and didn’t set up right. My mom’s recipe said, ‘do not cool in front of a drafty window’.”
So ingredients are..
1 can Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk or any brand as long as it is 13 1/2 to 14 oz can.
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (about 3 lemons)
3 egg yolks (save whites for meringue)
Optional some recipes use the zest of the lemon in this pie also.Â
Pre-bake the pie crust and cool
Mix filling together
Pour filling into baked crust
Make meringue (sometimes I add an extra white for more volume).Â
Put the meringue on top making fancy little doodles, peaks and valleys
Put the pie the oven 325 degrees to brown the peaks of the meringue.
Chill until ready to serve.
The meringue can be tricky so I won’t give details other than
Make sure bowl is dry…copper bowl is best
Do not let any yolk or water get into the whites
You can whisk or use electric beaters
Add cream of tartar to get more volume
Use powdered sugar, regular sugar or vanilla to flavor and/or sweeten
To make this pretty, you can make the pie in cupcake pan lined with parchment so each person for dinner has an individual pie.  They are so cute!
This Lemon Meringue pie reminds me of a Lemon Chiffon, beautiful creamy lemon yellow. Yum. Easy in the sense you mix and bake the lemon chiffon in the pie shell instead of the stovetop method used for Southern Style Lemon Meringue.Â
If you like tart pie, use regular lemons, otherwise use Meyer’s lemons.
A more tart version is the Southern Style Lemon Meringue Pie, where the filling is cooked on the stovetop first, and then added to the pie.Â
For presentation purposes, go big with the meringue. Make it pretty!
To Make the Lemon Meringue Pie
Start with a Blind Baked Pie Crust (See other post on Pie Crust)
Preheat the oven to 300°F.
Put the egg yolks, sweetened condensed milk and lemon juice and zest in a glass bowl and mix gently with a balloon whisk until all the ingredients are very well incorporated. The mixture will thicken naturally.
Pour into the partially blind-baked (10 minutes)Â Â pie crust and bake in the preheated oven for 20-30 minutes. The filling should be firm to the touch but still very slightly soft in the centre (not wobbly!). Leave to cool completely, then cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, or overnight if possible.
To Make the Simpler Meringue Topping:
Preheat the oven to 300°F.
Put the egg whites in a freestanding electric mixer with a whisk attachment and whisk until frothy. Gradually add 2 tablespoons of the sugar at a time, whisking well after each addition. Once you have whisked in all the sugar, add the vanilla extract and whisk again until stiff peaks form.
Spoon the meringue on top of the cold pie, making sure you completely cover the pie filling. Create peaks and swirls in the top of the meringue with the back of a tablespoon.
Bake in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes, or until the meringue is golden brown and crisp to the touch.)
Leave to cool completely before serving.
To Make the Italian Meringue Topping:
Preheat the oven to 300°F.
Put the sugar in a small saucepan and just cover with water. Set over medium heat and bring to the boil.
While the sugar is on the tovetop, put the egg whites in a freestanding electric mixer with a whisk attachment (or use a handheld electric whisk) on medium-slow speed. Whisk until the egg whites are light and foamy.
When the sugar has been boiling for a short while, it should reach soft ball stage. (This is when the bubbles go more syrupy. To check, dip a spoon into the sugar, then drop it directly into a glass of cold water. The sugar will firm up on contact with the water. You should be able to form a soft ball out of the sugar. If it sets to hard to be able to form a ball, it has been boiled too long and has reached hard ball stage. Be careful, as the sugar goes from soft ball to hard ball stage very quickly. Don’t touch the hot syrup with your bare hand until you have dipped the spoon into the glass of cold water, otherwise you will burn your fingers.)
Turn the mixer up to medium-high speed and slowly pour the sugar syrup into the egg whites. Once all the syrup is incorporated, turn the mixer up to maximum speed and whisk for about 10-15 minutes, or until the meringue has tripled in size and is very white and fluffy.
Turn the mixer back down to medium speed and continue to whisk for a couple more minutes until the meringue has cooled down slightly.
Spoon the meringue on top of the cold pie, making sure you completely cover the pie filling. Create peaks and swirls in the top of the meringue with the back of a tablespoon.
Bake in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes, or until the meringue is golden brown and crisp to the touch. Leave to cool completely before serving.Â
Depending upon how tart you like your lemon pie to be, choose the appropriate lemons. Meyers Lemons are sweeter as they are hybrid lemon mixed with a mandarine orange. Whereas the standard lemon is much tarter – which I like! I love the contrast between the sweet creamy meringue and that slight pucker in the lemon curd. Oh, I get tingly just thinking about it.
3 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 tablespoon finely grated lemon zest
Plus make pie crust. I used a Crisco recipe that includes egg and vinegar. Tastes like shortbread.
Meringue – Double this if you want a big cloud!
Beat 4 egg whites, add 1/4 c white sugar, and 1/8 tsp cream of tarter.
Spinkle with lemon zest for that old fashioned look.
Bake at 375 for 8-12 minutes until brown.
Well, we are planning for Christmas Eve dinner and this pie is on the menu. If you don’t have something chocolately, most will feel something is missing. So, this is going to be our Chocolate fix. So exciting!Â
Chocolate Pecan Pie
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup light corn syrup
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 T butter
2 Ounces unsweetened Chocolate cut into pieces
1 T Bourbon
1 tsp Vanilla
1/2 tsp Salt
1 cup chopped Pecans
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate pieces
1 9-inch unbaked pastry shell
Honey-Pecan Topping
1. Prepare your pie crust.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  In a large bowl combine eggs, granulated and brown sugars, corn syrup, bourbon, vanilla and salt. Melt butter and unsweetened chocolate pieces in microwave for 15 seconds or until melted (just barely – do not over do it.). Mix well, stir in semi-sweet chocolate pieces and chopped pecans.
3. Carefully pour the pie filling into the pie shell. Bake for 25 minutes. Use foil to cover pie edges to prevent overbrowning. Remove foil and bake another 15 minutes.
4. Make the Honey Pecan topping: In a small saucepan combine 2/3 cup brown sugar,  6 T of butter, 6 T of honey. Bring to a boil stirring constantly; reduce heat. Simmer 2 minutes uncovered stirring occasionally. Remove from heat. Stir in 2 cups Pecan halves.
5. Carefully spoon the Honey Pecan topping onto the pie.  Continue to bake for 10 minutes more or until the topping is bubbly. Cool completely.
This is a beautiful pie. Can be made 24 hours in advance.
Mix all the ingredients and then add the chopped pecans. Pour into the unbaked pie shell and bake with foil covering for 25 minutes. Remove foil and continue baking for 15 minutes. Add the Honey Pecan Topping carefully to the top. Return to oven about 10 minutes and then remove and cool the pie.Â
Honey Pecan Topping. In saucepan, combine 1/3 cup brown sugar, 3 T butter, 3 T honey. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in 2 Cups Pecan halves.Â
I love pie. Spice apple pie. Pie al mode. Pie with cinnamon and spice that leaves a trail throughout the house.
During thanksgiving, I am usually out of pie pans, and so this artesian pie you can make with out a pan. I used my large casserole dish, but you can use a cookie sheet. This baby has 6 large peeled and sliced Green apples, 1/8 cup of lemon juice, 1/4 cup of flour, 3/4 cup white sugar, 1/4 cup brown sugar, 2 tsp cinnamon, 2 tsp garam masala. Mix all your spices and flour and add to the green apples with lemon juice.
Double the pie crust recipe on this site and roll out the dough. I like to use a large cutting board and roll the dough onto the parchment paper so it easy to lift later.Â
Once your dough is rolled into one large round, place the pie filling in a mound in the center. Grab the edges of your parchment and place into the casserole dish. (The dish should be sprayed with pam for easy removal later.)Â
Dab butter on top of the pie, brush with egg wash and she is oven ready. Bake at 375 for 60 to 75 minutes or until golden brown.Â
At my office the other morning, one of my co-workers brought in an apple pie made withÂ
a shortbread crust his mother’s recipe. I have never had such a great pie. The buttery, flaky, thick cookie like crust has won me over.
Now, I am not a fan of plain shortbread cookies. And yet, when paired with the spiced fruit of apple and I am thinking pumpkin for Thanksgiving, I think it will steal the show.Â
Once I make it, I’ll post the picture. Since Thanksgiving is sneaking up quickly, I felt the need to share this recipe so you can too experiment.
(Please close your calorie counter otherwise you will not make this recipe.)
Original Recipe Yield 3 – 9 inch pie crusts
Â
Ingredients
3 cups butter, softened
5/8 cup light brown sugar
5/8 cup confectioners’ sugar
4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
Pie filling of your choice
You will want to prepare the pie filling on the the stovetop so that it will cook with the short baking time of the shortbread.  One crust on the bottom, filling, crust on top. Bake.
I am thinking this is a winner. Bake in a tart pan or pan you can remove the pie easily.Â
Directions
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
Using your hands, mix butter, brown sugar, white sugar and flour together in a large bowl. Squeeze and work dough until it holds together. Press into three 9 inch pie pans and chill for 2 hours.
Bake for 15 minutes, or until lightly brown around the edges.
 Dorie Greenspan, but I am sure my Mother had a similar recipe.
