Best Pumpkin Pie

Ellen says it's the best she's had, and pumpkin is her favorite kind of pie. It is based on the recipe on the back of the Libby's can of pumpkin, adjusted for what we had at home and other recipe ideas that we saw around the interwebs and recipe books at home. You can always play with spice amounts and combinations; I usually figure that you can add more spices to almost anything that it calls for in the recipe. I didn't take any pictures, but you can imagine what it looks like because it pretty much looked like any other pumpkin pie.

Best Pumpkin Pie 
1 single unbaked pie crust
filling:
1 15 oz can pumpkin puree
1 12 oz can sweetened condensed milk
3 eggs
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 450 F.

Place crust in a pie pan, fold under the edges and crimp. Keep crust cold in the fridge or freezer until until ready to bake pie

Mix together all filling ingredients thoroughly.

Pour filling into pie shell, bake at 450 for 10 minutes, decrease temperature to 350 for an additional 50 minutes, more or less. I could tell it was done but not overdone because the filling still jiggled a little bit, but didn't look at all liquid, it was puffy and developing smallish cracks on the sides next to the crust, and the bottom of the crust was a lovely golden brown as well as the exposed edges.

Let cool completely in the refrigerator before serving with freshly whipped cream. Store remainders in refrigerator if you have any.

Autumnal Muffins

A few years ago I signed up for newsletters from the National Honey Board, "Honey Feast," because they have recipes. The most recent one had a recipe for pumpkin honey muffins which was perfect to go with the fall colors.

Honey Pumpkin Muffins (from the National Honey Board)

1 1/2 cup all purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon (or more) ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/4 cup softened butter

3/4 cup honey (I used buckwheat honey because it tastes like molasses)

1 egg

1 cup solid pack pumpkin

1 cup chopped toasted walnuts (I used almonds because that's all I had on hand, walnuts would be better)

Preheat oven to 350 F. Prepare 1 regular muffin tin, either grease or paper cups.

Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg. Set aside. 

Beat butter with electric mixer, add honey, egg and pumpkin. Gradually add flour mixture to butter/honey mixture, fold in until just blended, stir in walnuts at the last second. Spoon batter into prepared muffin tin, bake for 25 to 30 minutes (I think mine took only 20 minutes). Test for doneness by inserting a toothpick in center of a center muffin, it should come out clean. Remove muffins immediately from pan and let cool on wire rack. Don't wait too long to eat them.

Columns at the National Arboretum

Thanksgiving: Pies

We made lots of pies for Thanksgiving, which was fun because there weren't very many of us, just Older Brother, Lovemuffin, and me, and we shared with everyone we could, but we still had lots leftover to eat for breakfast and lunch and dinner the whole weekend. I hope you have noticed the new link I put in my sidebar, my visiting teacher has a blog devoted to desserts and it is lovely. I used two recipes from her blog, which was wonderful because she had them up before Thanksgiving, unlike me. But on a positive note, my crusts were excellent (not bragging, just a fact). I doubled my recipe, used a lower proportion of whole wheat flour, and ended up with enough for 5 single-crust pies with a little left over.

One pie was a pecan and chocolate delight that we brought to someone else's house so that we wouldn't eat the whole thing. I had about 3 bites altogether and kind of regretted sharing so much.

Pecan Chocolate Pie

The second was cranberry cream pie. I made three of these in three days so that we could share and still have plenty of our own. I had a hard time getting this one to set up as much as it is in her picture. It was pretty soupy until it was completely chilled. And you know we were eating it before it was completely chilled. This soupiness I attribute to the fact that the cranberries were frozen before I made it, so when I rinsed them off probably some water stayed frozen on them and messed up the balance of liquid to thickener. I think I will keep experimenting with this one, maybe try instant tapioca as a thickener as well as not frozen berries. And I think it would be lovely with some other fruits too, so you might see this come up again.

Cranberry and Cream Pie

The other pie I made was pumpkin and coconut, which I thought would be great after my pumpkin/coconut cake experiment. And it was mediocre. I more or less followed the recipe on the back of the Libby's canned pumpkin, but replaced the evaporated milk with coconut milk, added extra spices including cardamom, and added about 3/4 cup of shredded coconut chopped more finely in my spice grinder. The recipe looks very much like this one, but without the Trader Joe's spice blend. Maybe Trader Joe's spice blend would have improved it. Well, it was better on the second and third day, and the coconut milk is a good way to make it lactose-free in case you have one of those that you need to accommodate (hi Dad!). But the coconut flavor was not pronounced enough, and I thought the shredded coconut would be an improvement on the texture of pumpkin pie, but it wasn't. Pumpkin pie isn't my favorite in the best of times, but it was pretty disappointing to have it so unimproved.

Pumpkin Coconut Pie

Older Brother said that someone he knows was telling him about their family, who on Thanksgiving morning all get together and eat pie for breakfast and then of course the regular meal later. I think that sounds  like a great idea and I will probably implement it next year. Or maybe tomorrow. What is your favorite kind of pie for Thanksgiving? Do you have any special pie traditions?

Pumpkin Coconut Spiced Cake

Pumpkin coconut cake, see how runny the frosting is!

Lovemuffin and I are packing up and moving across the country next week, and in order to take a break from the stress of packing stuff and selling furniture, we made a road trip for the weekend to visit some family. While we were there, we made this cake that got rave reviews from the cousins.

I decided to combine pumpkin and coconut because I had some in my cupboard and I want to get rid of as much stuff as possible. It was a pretty good experiment, but you can't taste the coconut as much as I would like, but I think there is a nice depth of flavor there, if you're paying attention when you eat it and not just snarfing it down. If I was going to make this again I would use some coconut flavoring just to emphasize the flavor there.

After I made the frosting, I realized I should have done it a little differently, I should have just used a couple tablespoons of the leftover coconut milk, powdered sugar, cinnamon, and coconut extract flavoring. Instead I had massive amounts of slightly too runny (but very tasty) frosting. But you'll be pleased, I know, to hear that cinnamon and coconut are a delightful combination.

pumpkin coconut cake baked in a bundt pan

Here is my recipe, based on a pumpkin cake recipe on allrecipes.com.

Pumpkin Coconut Spice Cake

1 cup coconut milk (I used a can of "light" coconut milk)
3 eggs
1 15 oz. can pumpkin puree (I had a 29 oz. can and we eyeballed half of it)
1 3/4 cups brown sugar
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup shredded coconut, cut even finer (if you have a food processor to do it quickly)

Preheat oven to 350, grease and flour one 10 inch bundt or tube pan.

Mix together the coconut milk, eggs, pumpkin and sugar. In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, soda, cinnamon, cloves, ginger and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir just until they are mixed, add in the nuts and shredded coconut. Pour batter into the prepared pan.

Bake cake in preheated oven for about 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let cool for about 5 minutes, the edges should start pulling away from the pan a little, flip it gently onto a wire rack to cool some more.

Frosting (this is what I did, that didn't yield the results I was hoping for, but was still very delicious)

remainder of the can of coconut milk (about 1/2 cup)
some cream cheese, softened slightly (about 4 oz. I forgot to measure)
at least 4 cups powdered sugar (I might have put in more, I lost track)
cinnamon to taste (I used about 2 1/2 tablespoons)

Mix all ingredients together well. You can use more or less sugar to make a thicker frosting, mine turned into more of a glaze. Chilling it helps it stiffen up, too. Pour frosting over the prepared cake. Enjoy.

what's left of pumpkin coconut cake after 30 minutes