Helen Myhre, Wisconsin farm woman turned restaurant owner and 13-time winner of the national pie-baking championship, gives these tips about cooking and baking pumpkin pies:
"As I must have said a million times in my life, tasting is the key to good cooking, and stirring up pumpkin is a perfect example. If you stick your finger in it, and it's bitter, you know you've forgotten the salt. You can stand and add sugar till the cows come home, but if you've forgotten the salt, pumpkin'll still have an edge of bitterness.
"Whatever you're making, tasting can prevent a lot of failures; at the restaurant, I've even found lemonade in the gravy. One of the cooks reached for potato water when a same-size jug of lemonade was standing alongside, and in went the lemonade. No one realized it until I stuck my finger in. So even if you're an expert, you gotta taste. And don't underestimate salt when it comes to pumpkin."
These cooking tips introduce Helen's recipe for pumpkin pie in her cookbook: Farm Recipes and Food Secrets from the Norske Nook: The Midwest's #1 Roadside Cafe. I prepared Helen's recipe for pumpkin pie filling when my daughter and I embarked on a crazy project to create pumpkin pie cornucopias. In doing so, I discovered my own tips about cooking with pumpkin. To find out what I learned and to get Helen's pumpkin pie recipe, click on "continue reading..."
Originally I wanted to make pie-dough turkeys filled with pumpkin filling and rolled in washed-raw cane sugar. I thought these would make a festive dessert for the Thanksgiving table. But to my surprise, filled pie dough does not stand at attention as do real turkeys. Rather, they sag, plop, and spill about the counter until, in disgust, you drop them in a muffin tin. So we switched to Lauren's idea for pumpkin-filled cornucopias. Even though pumpkin-pie cornucopia are markedly easier to make than pumpkin turkeys, our efforts revealed neither of us is the next Martha Stewart. No, Lucy and Ethel is a more apt comparison. But we had fun and it all started with Helen's pumpkin pie recipe:
- 3 cups pumpkin puree
- 3/4 cup brown sugar
- 3/4 cup white sugar
- 1 Tablespoon pumpkin pie spice (see Note)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 4 eggs
- 1 3/4 cups milk
- 1 unbaked single crust
Note: If you don't have pumpkin pie spice, use:
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- a dab of ground cloves
- a dab of allspice
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Using a whisk, mix the pumpkin, sugars, spice, salt, and eggs together well in a large bowl until blended. Don't over-mix.
Add the milk, and stir again.
Pour into the unbaked pie shell, and bake for 45 minutes, until when you touch a finger to the top, it does not stick.
No doubt, Helen won all those pie-baking contests because her pies were the most sweet and delicious. However, my personal preference is for less-sweet desserts, so I routinely cut back on the sugar proportions Helen suggests. In this recipe I reduced the white sugar to 1/4 cup. Given that Lauren and I sprinkled washed-raw cane sugar on top of the cornucopias before baking, they were certainly sweet enough for us.
The pie filling I mixed up seemed exceptionally runny. Sure, I'd poured a 1 3/4 cups of milk into it without any flour added to sop up the fluid, but still, the mixture seemed too runny. Then I noticed that when I put a spoonful of filling on the circular round of dough I'd cut out with the top of coffee mug, watery liquid separated out from the thicker pumpkin filling. I realized my mistake. I had used cheap pumpkin puree.
I know from my experience cooking whole pumpkins that after you slice them in half, scoop out the seeds, place them open-side down in a pan of 1/2-inch water and bake them at 350 degrees until tender (about 30-45 minutes depending on the pumpkin size) that it is crucial to drain the scooped-out pulp in a colander and get as much of the water out as possible before blending it in a blender. If you don't, you end up with runny, watery pumpkin puree. And that is what I had bought. No wonder I had gotten two cans of pumpkin puree for less than the price of one can of a major brand. The cans I'd bought were half water. Live and learn.
Undeterred as always, Lauren and I continued on. We cut out rounds of dough, spooned pumpkin filling into them (she complained I always put in too much, and she was right), and then we pinched the ends together of half of each dough round. For decoration, we dotted the cornucopia opening with pieces of sweetened dried cranberries and toasted pecans and almonds. We sprinkled washed-raw cane sugar mixed with cinnamon on top and baked them at 350 for about a half an hour.
In truth, these pumpkin-pie cornucopias were pretty easy, and with the right pumpkin puree would have turned out more as planned. But none-the-less, they tasted good. As we earned no laurels upon which to rest with this Thanksgiving cooking trial, we'll be back to try some other holiday baking recipes. Stay tuned.
Post script: As I added these photos to the post, Lauren stood over my shoulder watching and asked, "Do you think people will know they're cornucopias and not tacos?"
IT IS VERY NICE
Posted by: SHASHI | November 19, 2009 at 05:39 AM