Homemade Pumpkin Pie

Judah grew pumpkins this year. That is, he planted several pumpkin plants, several sprouted, two survived and those two bloomed wildly all summer, finally producing one pumpkin each.  Considering that both plants were attacked and destroyed by powdery mildew, I think we can be thankful to have a whole two. When I mentioned to Judah that we hadn’t had much success with pumpkin growing, he responded, “Yes we did – we got two pumpkins!!” I guess it’s all in what you expect.

But anyway, we had two pumpkins, the first of which we used for decor, and the second of which Judah wanted to make a pie with. So, feeling very proud of myself, I got instructions off of the internet (where else?), and proceeded to spend an entire afternoon to make a from-scratch pumpkin pie.

We succeeded. We ended up with one deep dish 9 inch pie and three custard cups I lined with extra pie dough and poured the extra filling in. It was all good! The color was a little funny – more brown than orange, and the flavor wasn’t exceptional – maybe a little spicier than my normal pumpkin pies. The texture was good – not stringy at all. (I pureed the living daylights out of it in the food processor) In the end we didn’t have the 3 cups of pumpkin the recipe called for, but we had an extra piece of acorn squash from the night before, that I pureed and threw in and it worked out OK.

Now, would I do it again? Maybe. I’d like to try an actual pie pumpkin, as opposed to the jack-o-lantern variety we grew. Then I could make a real comparison with a canned pumpkin pie.

But I have this to say – with a pie pumpkin, it’d better be really good, or I probably won’t do it ever again. It’s not that it’s hard – all of the steps are fairly simple – but it makes an incredible mess! First there’s the cutting board, ice cream scoops, the bowl for the seeds, then the steamer basket and pot, then another couple of bowls and spoons to separate the skin from the flesh, and then the food processor – and that’s before you make the pie crust and mix up the final pie filling! It’s a TON of dishes!

It was worth it though. The kids really enjoyed it, and hopefully they will remember the afternoon they spent making authentic pumpkin pie with Mom.