With Thanksgiving just around the corner, I decided it was time to make a pumpkin pie. Growing up my parents had few cookbooks and they were mostly American, so I’ve been making pumpkin pies since I was a teenager.
While the pastry has changed over time, I’ve been using this filling for a few years now and adapted over time based on my personal preference. You can buy tinned pumpkin puree, but I’ve always made my own. I just wrap a chunk of pumpkin in foil, which I’ve deseeded, and bake it in the oven until fork tender. Once the pumpkin is cool, I scrape the flesh from the skin then mash it with a fork. Pumpkin puree freezes well so you can make it ahead of time.
Normally I bake my pies in a vintage metal pie plate so I was interested in how the le Creuset heritage pie dish would perform. The pie dish is made from stoneware coated with an enamel finish. The finish resists chipping, scratching and staining and it’s also dishwasher safe for easy cleaning.
The pie dish makes a 23 cm pie, the perfect dimensions for this recipe. The
Le Creuset dish is oven and microwave safe as well as freezer safe. While the manufacturers recommend only using wooden and plastic utensils with the dish, I cut the pie with a knife and the coating didn’t appear to be harmed at all.
Well, how did it perform? The pie crust was golden brown and best of all there were none of the dreaded ‘soggy bottoms’. However the
pie dish is much deeper than my metal pie plate and as stoneware conducts heat less well than metal, the bake time was affected. The pastry took an extra 30 minutes to brown and the filling took an extra 15 minutes before it was set. The upside, the dish looks way more glamorous than my metal tin and you can store any leftover pie in the fridge still in the dish without worrying that the metal might taint the pie. I’m looking forward to whipping up a few more pies in my Le Creuset heritage pie dish. Maybe a rhubarb and strawberry lattice pie next time.
Here’s the recipe for you which makes a 23cm/9 inch pie. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.
Ingredients:
- Pumpkin Pie
- Pastry
- 250g plain flour
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 150g cold butter, diced
- 75mls cold water
- Filling
- 345g (1¼ cups) pumpkin puree
- 2 tablespoons maple syrup
- 250ml can Nestle Reduced Fat Cream or you can use regular cream
- ½ cup brown sugar
- 3 eggs
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ground cloves
- ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- ½ teaspoon ground ginger
To serve
Double cream/icing sugar for dusting
Method
To make the pastry, on a flat work surface combine the flour and salt and then incorporate the cold diced butter with your fingers. Rub the butter into the flour until the butter pieces are no larger than the size of peas. Make a well in the centre of the flour and pour in the cold water. Using your hands, mix the water into the flour until dough is formed. Or you can pulse the flour, butter and salt together in a food processor 10 times, before adding enough water then whizzing the mixture a few times until the dough just starts to come together. Flatten out the dough a little then wrap the dough in plastic and put in the refrigerator for one hour.
Spray the pie dish with olive oil spray. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured sheet of baking paper and roll to a 4mm-thick disc. Line the base and side of the dish with pastry and trim any excess. Pinch edges to crimp then place in the fridge for another hour to rest. I like to make a few leaves for decoration, brushed with milk then heavily dredged with raw sugar and I bake these until golden brown while prebaking the pastry case.
Preheat oven to 180°C. Line the pastry case with crumpled baking paper and fill with pastry weights, rice or beans. Bake for 45 minutes or until light golden brown but start checking the pastry at 30 minutes as all ovens are different. My pie crust took an hour to bake. Remove the pie from the oven to a cooling rack and wait 10 minutes before removing the paper and weights. Set aside to cool completely. This step can be done ahead of time.
To make the filling, combine the pumpkin puree, maple syrup, cream, sugar, eggs, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and ginger in a bowl.
Whisk until smooth, then pour through a sieve into a large jug. If you have a stick blender then place everything into the large jug and blend until smooth. No need for the sieve. Place the pie dish on an ovenproof
baking tray, then pour the filling over the pastry. Bake in the centre of the 180°C oven for about one hour or until just set but start checking at the 40 minutes mark. Set aside to cool completely then store covered in the fridge. Just before serving, dust the pie with icing sugar if desired. Cut into wedges and serve with double cream.
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