“Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie.”
Jim Davis
Pumpkin Custard Pies…perfect little things! I’m not a huge fan of pumpkin but the younger teen really loves this humble veggie in dessert. These pies changed my view on the humble pumpkin; I fell in love with the pies {if I may so myself}!
… & before I forget “Hello October! When did you sneak in?” Can’t believe it’s already nearing the end of the year. Glad to say goodbye to July and September; they were tiresome months. The weather here is still quite warm and muggy, with a spell of retreating monsoons thrown in. We didn’t complain about the petite pumpkin custard pies though!
Smooth, silky, delicious, full of autumn connect and flavours, they turned out really nice! It began with an experiment and turned into custard pies I will make often. I contemplated adding a crust to make a’pie-ish‘ pie, then abandoned the idea. Gluten and grain free seemed more appealing.
In my quest to cut out unnecessary carbs, I kept these simple. I think the depth of flavour came through because of fresh pumpkin puree and condensed milk. The yellow really brightened up my day. I love the local produce this season … pumpkins, water chestnuts, apples, pears all flooding the market. Pineapples too.
If eggless baked yogurt tart could set {Cherry Yogurt Tart, Dark Chocolate Orange Yogurt Eggless Cheesecake, Deep Dark Salted Butter Caramel Eggless Yogurt Cheesecakes}, then I figured the pumpkin pies with eggs would laugh all the way home. They did!
Worked a charm. They were ever so simple to make, that I decided to pretty them up a bit. They taste just as good without the garnish. Yet a little lace collar, a dollop of unsweetened cream, a sprinkle of pure maple flakes and a garnish of pumpkin seeds brittle makes it pretty! Pretty special!
[print_this]Recipe: Pumpkin Custard Pies
Summary: Smooth, silky, delicious, full of autumn connect and flavours, the Pumpkin Custard Pies are a wonderful make ahead dessert option for fall. A simple recipe which comes together in minutes once you have the pumpkin puree done.
Prep Time: 10 minutes Total Time: 1 hour plus cooling time Ingredients:
Preheat oven to 200C. Line the bottoms of 8 X 3″ dessert rings with strong foil, bringing it up over the sides to create a base. Place foil base side down on a cookie tray.
Place all ingredients in bowl of food processor and blend until smooth. {Alternatively, place in a large bowl and use a balloon whisk to get a smooth uniform mixture}
Divide the mixture between the 8 rings.
Bake at 200C for 10 minutes, then decrease oven temperature to 170C and bake for another 25-30 minutes.
Allow to cool in rings. Chill for a few hours or overnight, demold onto serving platters and serve with low fat cream if desired.
“Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie.”
Jim Davis
India is pretty much pumpkin country, the yellow and rather mellow squash that you will find around every nook and corner all year through, a vegetable I looked at rather disdainfully until I made my first Praline Pumpkin Pie 2 years ago. The lad nudges me this time every year to remind me he l♥ves it! This one is for him – a Perfect Pumpkin Pie.Mentally conditioned by food blogs, lovely pumpkin posts painting the net in a orange hue, I eagerly await fall. It makes me look at the pumpkin in wonder, a rather underestimated veggie, yet one that holds a lot of promise. The beautiful flavour of the pumpkin soup I shared with Jamie in London holds a special connect. It was the company, the atmosphere, the euphoria of that first time we all met. Somewhere in the middle of all this, the humble pumpkin got an even more elevated status in my life!I made soup last year, and for some silly reason it never got blogged. This pumpkin pie is the result of inspiration out of the blue. I saw a mail in my inbox saying ‘If you had two extra hours in a day, how would you spend it?‘ … and I thought, hmmm, I wonder!An extra 2 hours for the obsessed baker in me is like an impossible dream. My life seems to run choc-a-bloc morning to night, balancing the fine act of racing through laundry, trying to feed a blog, a brood, a pooch, snatching a few harassed moments to take photographs while the dog is now tall enough to get to table tops {… CUTE as a button too}, grocery {sigh}…and then emails of course!That thought stayed in my mind while I ran the laundry that morning, and teased me while I went to the vegetable vendor, our fabulous sabziwala. Someone was buying pumpkin and the fellow cut a nice bright one for her. That was my cue!Give me 2 extra hours and watch me bake with joy, bake something to fill home with autumnal aromas, pumpkin gently roasting {of course you can buy it canned as well in the rest of the world, but we know no luxuriesof the sort in India!}. Much from scratch with this too, I have never had tomatoes or pumpkin out of a can here. I have read though that fresh roasted pumpkin beats the canned one hands down. Got an extra hour?Roast some!
I always have tins of condensed milk on hand after having indulged in this absolutely addictive Vietnamese Coffee Ice Cream from Perfect Scoop. You need less than an hour to make it, need resolve to keep away from the freezer, and finally 10 minutes to polish it off. But if you can grab those two extra hours, then I recommend you head for pie! The verdict was delicious! The terrible teen screwed up her nose and said “Ewwwwwww …. pumpkin!!,” and then predictably went on to ravenously demolish the slice, and ask for another. There was something about it!! The boy lapped it up … it was his on request after all!!This is a pie right for fall. The filling … silky, smooth and spicy! The crust just right, not too crisp, yet offers a handsome bite, gently teasing the palette with beautiful pistachio flavours and a pleasing texture. I wish I could offer you a slice…it was that good, and it went FAST!
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And since I had so much extra time, I shot some pictures of out CUTE Coco … she was ‘all eyes’!! Oh to have those extra two hours more often!
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Also find me on The Rabid Baker, The Times of India
