Pumpkin pie recipe

I have been making the following pumpkin pie recipe for a very long time — since the mid-1980s or thereabouts. It’s not that fancy, but the extra molasses and cloves and such give it a taste that often gets positively commented on.

Note: this recipe calls for you to use an actual pumpkin, not canned pie mix. If you’re looking for a recipe for your canned pie mix, look on the side of the can!

As developed by Jay Furr (jfurr@furrs.org), from various sources and his own kitchen.

Preparing the pumpkin

Find a small “pie pumpkin” — a mini-pumpkin about eight inches across, often sold under the name “pie pumpkin.” The consistency of the meat will be more tender than in big overgrown Jack-o-Lantern style pumpkins. If you use a big monster pumpkin, you can follow these instructions, but be aware, you only need around 3 cups of prepared pumpkin meat to make two pies. Don’t throw in the entire gallon of pumpkin meat into a two-pie recipe!

Cut it into fourths, and scrape all the stringy guts and seeds out carefully. Try to get all the guts; if you have to scrape somewhat into the actual flesh, that’s fine. Put the fourths (you can leave fragments of stalk and so forth attached – it’s not a problem) skin-side up on a baking sheet or in a baking pan, add a little water, and bake for an hour to an hour and a half at 375°. It’s important to keep water in the pan, or the meat will dry out too much and you’ll have a stringy pie. Keep adding water if the water keeps evaporating.

When you can peel the skin right off, that’s when it’s time to take the pumpkin meat out of the oven. Peel the skin off, including any remaining pieces of stalk. Put the rest into a bowl, and puree it using a mixer, food processor, or whatever you have handy. A hand-held mixer works just fine. Keep beating the stuff until it’s completely turned to goo, and don’t wait too long after taking the meat out of the oven before starting to work pureeing the meat – it’ll cause the pie to be stringy. You’ll probably wind up with 2-3 cups of goo; 3 cups is ideal.

Preparing the filling

For two pies (assuming that you wound up with 3 or almost 3 cups of goo), you need:

• 3 cups of pureed pumpkin goo
• 1 cup white sugar
• ½ cup brown sugar (dark brown sugar will result in a darker pie)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 6 teaspoons “pumpkin pie spice” (alternately, four to five teaspoons cinnamon and one to two teaspoons nutmeg)
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• 6 slightly beaten whole eggs, or one and a half cartons of Egg Beaters or other egg substitute
• 1 12-ounce can evaporated milk
• 6-8 tablespoons dark molasses

Mix the pumpkin, sugar, salt, and spices together well, then blend in the eggs, evaporated milk, and finally, the molasses. It’s okay to taste the filling to ensure that you’re not adding too much molasses, but then, it’s a good idea to add a little more than what you think is enough.

The pies

Fill two 9-inch unbaked pie shells with the filling. It’s okay if it domes over a little, but if you wound up with way too much, pour the remainder into a Pyrex bowl or something and bake it alongside the pies and call it “pumpkin pudding.”

Preheat the oven to 350° and bake 50 or so minutes, until a knife or fork stuck in the middle comes out clean. It will still have a slightly sticky look to it at this point and it’ll give some as you stick the utensil in, but if it comes out clean and the hole doesn’t immediately close, it’s probably about done. If your oven tends to run a little hot, reduce the heat a bit instead of decreasing the cooking time.