Challenge Accepted: IMPOSSIBLE PIE

I found this recipe in the newspaper a little while back and thought it looked tempting enough to try. It’s easy peasy and totally delectable but it looks complicated and fancy when you serve it, and it is not a totally overpowering dessert, so you can always have seconds!

The impossible part of this pie is that you mix everything together all at once and pour the very liquidy batter into your pan for baking, and what comes out ends up having three layers: a sweet fudgy layer at the bottom, a custardy layer in the middle, and the chewy coconut layer on top. Full disclosure: I never achieved the fudgy bottom layer, but I suspect it’s because I used a huge heavy pie pan (because that was the only one I had that was deep enough). Perhaps if you use a thinner pie pan you might have better luck – if not, the pie is still pretty effing good.

Heat your oven to 325°F and spray a 10″ wide and 2″ deep pie pan.

Melt 1/2 cup butter, and let that come to room temperature. Pro tip: if you only melt the butter halfway, then give it a stir, the melted butter will melt the non-melted butter and the non-melted butter will bring the temperature of the melted butter down faster and you don’t have to wait as long for your super molten burn-y melted butter to cool down. It’s like MAGIC. Or thermodynamics. Either or.

Grab 4 large eggs out of the fridge and bring them to room temperature by plopping them in a bowl of warm water. While you’re at it, leave 2 cups whole milk (or a combo of milk and cream) out on the counter to warm up too. HEY PRESTO!

Take 1 lemon and zest it and then juice it. Nothing super magic about that. It’s a lemon for crying out loud.

Grab yourself a perfectly ordinary food processor (or is it?). Or a blender. Or do this by hand. I prefer the magic of electricity. Plop in your 4 eggs, and 2 teaspoons vanilla extract.

Then tip in (or do this first, the order doesn’t matter – this is just how I took the photos) 1 cup granulated sugar, 1/2 cup all-purpose flour, 1/4 teaspoon sea salt, and 1/4 teaspoon baking powder.

THEN tip in (or do this second, or whatever) your 1/2 cup butter, 2 cups whole milk, and lemon juice and zest.

Give that a good whaz, THEN tip in (and this time it DOES matter the order because this has to happen after the whazzing) 1 1/4 cups shredded sweetened dried coconut (I used unsweetened. It was fine.). Stir that around.

Pour the batter into your prepared pan. There it is, all perfectly ordinary and homogeneous-ish.

Shove that in your prepared oven (I used my convection toaster oven) and bake for 55-60 minutes, until the top is a golden brown around the edges and you can shove a toothpick in the centre and it comes out clean (LIKE IT WAS NEVER DIRTY! AMAZING!).

Pop that on a wire rack to cool. You can serve this warm but it cuts best if it’s been chilled first, so I recommend that. Keep any leftovers (HA) in the fridge, covered up.

Even without that fudgy layer, this thing was still ballin’.

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Momofuku’s Banana Cream Pie, only slightly butchered.

I’ve been watching a lot of Netflix since LongJohn was born – it helps to pass the time while being forced to stay perfectly stationary for long periods of time. I figured going into this that I’d try to stick with documentaries – that way I could educate myself and if I was interrupted (which I often am) then I wouldn’t miss too much plot if they played in the background while I did something else. And so I’ve been watching a ton of cooking documentaries, and I just finished plowing through The Mind of a Chef. In the first season, the focus is largely on David Chang, owner of Momofuku in New York. One of the segments features his pastry chef, who whips up a banana cream pie like it was nothing.

It looked so easy I figured I could do it even with LongJohn around. And then I had to think about that for a minute. This recipe involves making a custard, and uses four different kitchen appliances, some of them more than once. It really isn’t THAT easy, but it’s easy for me NOW to do. Talk to me five years ago and I would never have attempted this, or I would have addressed it as a challenge. It’s weird how much this blog has made me grow as someone who cooks things. But on to the pie, which is semi-easy if you’ve made things in the kitchen before. I set up a mis en place because I knew LongJohn could interrupt me at any time.

I also took my butter and, because my microwave is all the way in the basement, I set it outside on my back porch in the sun to melt. I’m that lazy.

Plus it was like 33°C, which is more than warm enough to melt butter.

You like my squinty face?

And so it did.

The recipe I used printed everything in weights (ounces and grams) so I’m going to use ounces here – my apologies. Get your kitchen scale ready. Start with 8 oz very ripe bananas (this is like two). These are the black ones that you chuck in your freezer. Pitch those into a blender together with 2 3/4 oz whipping cream, and 2 1/4 oz milk and blend the crap out of them until they’re lovely and smooth.

Next, tip in 3 1/2 oz sugar, 1 oz cornflour (I’ve come to realize that this is a Britishism for cornstarch, not masa harina, which I used – butchery #1), a pinch of salt, and 3 large egg yolks. Blend that again, scraping down the sides of the blender, until the colour is uniform.

Pour that stuff into a medium saucepan and cook over medium-low heat, whisking often, until the mixture thickens. Clean your blender while this is going on.

The recipe says to bring it to a boil but mine never did. Eventually it will be a very heavy paste that holds its shape. Pour the thick stuff back into the blender.

Grab 2 leaves gelatin or 1 pouch gelatin (I thought a leaf equaled a pouch and used two pouches – butchery #2) and follow the instructions to make it “bloom”. When it’s ready, chuck it in the blender along with 1 1/2 oz butter and blend until smooth (again).

Next, drop in 1/2 teaspoon yellow food colouring (otherwise your pie will be brown not  yellow) and blend again until the pie is artificially crazy yellow (it will get lighter later, I promise).

Pour the yellow goo into a container and chill it for 30-60 minutes.

While that’s happening, make the chocolate crumb for your crust (I actually did this first, because it made more sense to me). Preheat your oven to 300°F and stir together 3 1/2 oz plain flour, 1 teaspoon cornflour (again, cornstarch), 3 1/2 oz sugar, 2 oz cocoa powder, and 1 teaspoon salt.

Tip in 3 oz melted butter (yay, the sun!) and beat until small clusters form.

Spread the clusters on a baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes. The clusters should be still moist but will dry out as they cool. In order for this to happen they have to be a bit bigger than what you see in the picture, because these will burn (so either cook them for less time or make them bigger – butchery #3). Apparently this makes more than you need for a 10″ pie so you will only use 3/4 of it but I didn’t want to waste it or store it so I used it all in my 9″ pie plate and it was totally fine.

Once the clusters have cooled, chuck them into a food processor and pulse until they turn sandy and there are no chunks left.

Tip these granules into a bowl and toss with 2 teaspoons sugar and 1 tablespoon melted butter.

Work that with your hands until the stuff is moist enough to knead into a ball (I did not do this because my poor carpal tunnel hands are killing me). Press that into the pan. I did it with just the crumbs and it was fine (butchery #4).

Don’t forget to press it firmly into all the corners of the pan – you don’t want it to be too thick there.

Now for the rest of the banana cream. Whisk 6 1/2 oz whipping cream and 5 3/4 oz icing sugar together until stiff peaks form (remember that it helps to chill your beater and the bowl beforehand).

Tip in your cooled yellow goo and mix, mix, mix.

See? I told you it would get paler.

Tip half the goo into your pie shell. Cut up another, less ripe banana (I used two because they were kind of weenie) and spread that around on the surface. You can get fancy with the layout but nobody’s going to see it.

Add the rest of the goo and smooth it out. Make sure none of the banana pieces are sticking out because they will oxidize and turn brown.

Chill the pie for a little while then serve and eat within a day or two. Enjoy!

Cheater Key Lime Pie (Gluten Free!)

If you’ve been following our shenanigans for a while then you’ll be familiar with my recipe for Key Lim Pie, which I have slowly perfected over time. It’s the Pie’s favourite pie that I make, so when his birthday rolled around this year I decided to do my best to make it again. The thing is, it’s been really hot, and I didn’t want to do much heavy baking. Also, LongJohn decided to go through the growth spurt from hell that week as well, so I had to make something easy that I could do while pretty much wearing him constantly.

I found a few recipes online for no-bake versions but one of them required the use of a frozen can of limeade, and the other was bottled lime juice and Cool Whip. While I DID still have leftover Cool Whip in the freezer from the pre-labour cheesecake, I was reluctant to cut TOO many corners. That meant that I was at least going to use real key limes in my recipe.

And as Fussellette was staying with us at the time, we went with gluten-free Oreo-like cookies for the crust. This recipe makes two 9″ pies. Easy peasy.

So start by chucking two packs of Oreos or Oreo-like cookies into your food processor with about 1/2 cup shredded coconut.

Buzz, buzz, buzz. Then tip in about 1/3 cup softened butter and give that a whaz until you get crumbs that stick together when you press on them.

Press the crumbs into two 9″ pie dishes and bake at 350°F for about 12 minutes. Let those cool completely. I did this pie over the course of three days, so the pie crusts were done on day one. If you really don’t want to bake at all you can buy a pre-made graham crust, but I like my key lime to have a chocolate crust and they really don’t have gluten-free versions of that at the grocery store near my house.

Next, we deal with the limes. For two pies you’ll need 2lbs key limes. Grate the zest from each one. It takes for-freaking-ever.

Next, you’ll need to juice them. This many limes should yield between 1 and 1 1/3 cups of juice.

I did the grating and juicing while wearing a grumpy newborn. Pro tip: roll the limes between your palm and the cutting board before cutting them open to juice them. It bruises the little globule things that hold the juice and makes it easier for you to extract the liquid.

When you’re ready to assemble (day three in my case), grab as well 2 cans sweetened condensed milk, 2 cups Cool Whip (frozen), and 1 cup whipping cream.

Combine all ingredients in the bowl of a mixer and stir to combine.

Additional pro tip: frozen Cool Whip acts like a shovel and literally scoops all your liquids out of the bowl when mixing, so I would recommend breaking it into chunks first.

Then you can taste your filling. I may have spilled some on the baby, but he was asleep and didn’t mind.

Your batter will be whitish with green flecks. Totally not authentic, but nice and tart.

Divide the filling between the two shells.

Clean up your mixer after the filling explosion.

Chill the pies for a couple hours until set.

Serve and enjoy!

Half-Baked Turtle Brownie Cheesecake

While I was waiting for the kid to show up I was getting pretty bored and pretty desperate, but I didn’t have a lot of energy. One of my former colleagues recommended cheesecake as a way to start labour and I figured, why not? I had nothing to do, and an easy cheesecake recipe would be doable given my lack of energy. This one from Sprinkle Some Sugar seemed to fit the bill. It involves using store-bought brownie mix, fudge sauce, AND COOL WHIP, so it’s the ultimate in cheater recipes for me. And given that the day I baked it the temperatures skyrocketed again for a roller coaster June, I was happy to be able to chuck this in the fridge instead of hanging over a hot oven.

The belly bump may have accidentally encountered some caramel during the making of this recipe.

The original recipe is a bit of a misnomer, as it states that there is no baking involved whatsoever with this recipe. That is a bold-faced lie – you gotta bake the brownie bottom. But it’s worth it.

Find a round springform pan, about 8″ or 9″ (this one is 9″ I think), spray it with cooking spray, and whip up some brownie batter. You can use your favourite recipe but I used this boxed stuff (hey man, I was really pregnant at the time, gimme a break).

I figured the salted caramel would add more panache to the finished product.

Plus I love the ridiculous measurements of the wet ingredients. So simplistic!

While this is baking, work on your caramel sauce (you can buy caramel sauce, of course, but this one is easy and a good way for caramel newbs to get started).

In a small pot over medium-high heat, whisk together 1 cup granulated sugar and 1/4 cup water. Whisk and swirl the pot until the sugar is all dissolved, then keep swirling the pot (but no stirring or whisking!) frequently until the liquid turns a nice dark amber colour.

When you get the colour you like, carefully pour in 3/4 cup heavy cream – watch out, because it will fizz up like crazy – and whisk that until smooth. Then tip in 3 tablespoons butter and 1 teaspoon vanilla and stir until those are all melted away. Set the finished caramel sauce aside to thicken up and cool completely.

Once the brownie bottom is ready and baked according to whatever instructions you have, remove the outer ring and let it cool completely as well and start working on your filling.

In the bowl of a mixer, beat together 16oz softened plain cream cheese, 1/2 cup granulated sugar, and 1/2 cup brown sugar until smooth and creamy. I mean, it’s gonna be creamy anyway because it’s cream cheese but you get what I mean about the texture, right? Man I need more sleep …

Stir in about 3/4 cup of that lovely caramel sauce you made (or squeeze it from the bottle you purchased you philistine) and add in as well 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and a pinch of nutmeg.

Then I want you to do something totally foreign to me: grab 4oz Cool Whip and fold that in as well.

Put the outer ring of your springform pan back on and smush all that Cool-Whipped creaminess into the pan.

Give it some smoothing out so it *kind* of looks like you baked it, then chuck that in the fridge for 3-4 hours.

Before serving, crush a bunch of pecans and spread them over top.

Grab some fudge sauce (I bought it, don’t judge) and whatever’s left of your caramel.

Pop off the outer ring and drizzle liberally with fudge and caramel. The fudge I bought didn’t drizzle, so I have fudge poops drizzled with caramel but you get the general intention here, at least. Keep the leftover cheesecake wrapped up in the fridge for up to a week. Enjoy!

Fast-Tip Friday: Drying Herbs

If you’re lucky, you still have time to run out and grab the rest of your late-summer herbs from the garden and do something with them before it’s too late. If you’re me, then while you were out of the country for work the temperatures dropped below zero and now all your basil is a disgusting black mess.

HOWEVER, there’s still hope for a good number of your other hardier herbs.

Since the summer, I’ve been hauling baskets of herbs inside to process. Some end up in butter (because mmmm, butter), and some, like the lemongrass stalks you see in this basket, go in the freezer. But most of them, I dry. It takes almost zero effort on my part and then the herbs are there for me to mix and package as gifts: spice rubs and herbal teas are quick and easy to make.

What makes it easiest is this handy-dandy herb dryer that I picked up from Lee Valley. Hang it somewhere out of the way with good air circulation (for us, that’s over the side of our main staircase), and then just shove it full of fresh herbs.

The mesh will allow air to circulate on all sides, meaning nothing gets mouldy or soggy, and some of your herbs, like lemon balm, will dry in a matter of days. And you didn’t have to do ANYTHING!

Added bonus: for the few days it takes these herbs to start to dry up, the hallway smells like pizza or lemons or whatever we’ve got in the shelves.

Freezer Pies

What do you do when you have a big party coming up that requires lots of yummy baked goods, but you know that on the weekend in question you’re going to be way too busy to do anything as involved as make a pie? You take advantage of your freezer, of course.

First you make up your favourite pastry dough. I always love the original Joy of Cooking version that you can find in a previous post here. The Joy also has some great information on how to make pies ahead of time by freezing them before baking.

Then you make up your fillings. Here we opted for a vanilla peach and a strawberry-blueberry version. As long as you have about five cups of fruit, and then a couple tablespoons each of sugar, butter, and thickener (flour or corn starch), plus a few drops of lemon juice, then you can make any pie you want.

We had a tool that Cait called a “strawberry effer-upper” (though she used a stronger word than “effer,” if you catch my drift) which handily slices your strawberries into several neat pieces. Cait’s sister Jules was very happy to take on the effer-upper role. She’s a little sadistic like that.

Cait also made the error of purchasing clingstone peaches for our pies instead of freestone peaches, so getting the flesh of the fruit off the stone was a bit of a challenge. Eventually I discovered that if you cut wedges into the peach then it’s easier to pry off the sections.

Once your fillings are made and mixed, leave them at least fifteen minutes to macerate.

Ideally your dough has been chilling happily all this time and you’ve had a chance to roll it out and let it chill some more. The difference between a regular pie and a freezer pie is that when you plop the bottom shell into the pie dish, you leave a piece of plastic wrap on the bottom between the dish and the pastry. Honest.

Then you fill your pie that is sitting on top of a layer of plastic wrap. This pie is quite tall.

Seal it in with more pastry. Do not glaze your pastry at this point, if you’re into that kind of thing. You gotta wait on that.

Now wrap the rest of it up in plastic wrap so it’s tightly sealed. Wrap again in foil and shove that into the freezer.

When you’re ready to bake, haul the frozen pies out of the freezer. Preheat your oven to 425°F.

I stored the strawberry/blueberry one on an angle so I did have a bit of leakage.

Pry the pie out of the dish and peel off the bottom wrap.

Plop the pie back into the dish (you can glaze it now if you wish) and pop it in the oven for 10 minutes.

After ten minutes, haul it out and cut steam vents in the pastry.

Then shove it back in the oven (this time at 350°F) for a further hour, until the pastry is light brown and crusty and the insides are bubbling out.

Let those cool completely (or nearly completely) before eating. Yum!

Mini Wonton Quiches

I finally did get to have that finger-food brunch I was trying for. These wonton mini quiches were a big hit.

I enjoyed cutting up all the vegetables super small to fit in the tiny muffin cup spaces.

I did scoop the seeds out of the tomatoes to avoid mushiness.

And I couldn’t decide on cheeses, so I went with both.

I grabbed some fresh herbs from my very own backyard, because it’s actually spring now.

In the end I had one set of quiches with mushroom, spinach, chives, and goat cheese, and the other was tomato, onion, cheddar, and cilantro. For amounts I kind of winged it, sorry.

Anyway, preheat your oven to 350°F and line your muffin tins with two wonton wrappers each. Align them so they are at 45° angles to each other for the largest surface area. I didn’t do this but I would recommend greasing the muffin tins before you do this.

Then I stuffed the tins with my vegetable-cheese mixtures.

Then I started cracking some eggs. For 24 mini quiches I used about 14 eggs. I also added in a few tablespoons cream, some salt and pepper, and some grated parmesan. Gave that a good mixing.

Then I ever so carefully poured the egg goo into the muffin cups.

It’s hard to get it so it doesn’t go around the seal of the wonton.

I baked them for about 15 minutes, until they were cooked through.

Because I didn’t grease the pan it took some persuasion to get them out.

But they were so good!

And even great for a cold quick breakfast or lunch the next day!

Cheater Lemon Tarts

Ever have those social obligations where you promised to bring dessert and then totally forgot about it until the last minute and now you are stuck? Do I have a solution for you! Next time you’re at the grocery store, grab a package of frozen tart shells and chuck it in the freezer and forget about it. Then, when you’re in a bind, haul it out and make some tarts!

For this, you’ll want to preheat your oven to 375°F and set out 12 frozen tart shells to thaw for about 10 minutes.

Normally with lemon tarts you’d carefully create a lemon curd-like custard that you’d cook slowly and then strain. Not today! We’re going to cheat. Melt yourself 1 tablespoon butter. Let it cool while you mix up the other stuff.

In a bowl, beat up 2 eggs. Zest 1 lemon and add that in as well.

Juice the lemon until you get about 1/4 cup lemon juice (I ended up with a wee bit extra). Add that in too.

Now you need some sweet for this tart – dump in 1/4 cup granulated sugar. Stir all that up.

Finally, add in your cooled butter and stir it around.

I mixed my tart mixture in a measuring cup so I could use the spout to pour and make my life easier. Evenly distribute the tart mixture amongst the shells.

Bake the tarts for 15 minutes, until the shells are starting to brown and the filling is puffed up and solid. Allow them to cool completely. Dust with icing sugar immediately before serving.

Wanna see something crazy? While the tarts were baking, I noticed that a few of them were – well, they were DANCING. And they didn’t stop!

Momofuku’s Crack Pie

When I first saved this recipe in my Evernote folder, “crack pie” was super trendy. But that was like FOUR YEARS AGO. I am so not trendy. But I had 8 egg yolks left over from making meringues and this is a great way to use them up. The measurements are a bit finicky, probably, I suspect, because they were converted from metric for American audiences, but still workable. I made the cookie crust the day before, just because there are a lot of steps to follow.

To make the oat cookie for the crust: Preheat your oven to 375°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Technically you’re supposed to do this in a 9″ x 13″ pan but mine was dirty so what’re you gonna do …

In a bowl, whisk together 2/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour, 1/8 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/8 teaspoon baking powder.

In the bowl of your electric mixer, cream together 1/2 cup butter, 1/3 cup brown sugar, and 3 tablespoons granulated sugar.

Beat in 1 egg until well combined.

Then tip in your flour and mix that in well.

Finally, add 1 cup oats and stir until fully blended.

Press your cookie dough (because that’s what it is, surprise!) onto your pan.

Bake for 20 minutes, then cool it completely on a wire rack.

Those black spots are my buttery fingerprints, burned to a crisp.

Bust it into pieces.

To construct the cookie crust: Take the crumbled bits of cookie and chuck them in your food processor together with 1/4 cup butter and 1 1/2 tablespoons brown sugar and pulse until you have fine, clumpy crumbs.

I actually found it easier (because my processor is super small) to pulse the cookie on its own and then add in the butter and sugar.

The crumbs should stick to themselves when you press on them.

Divide the crumbs between 2 10″ pie pans. These are 9″, which will make the filling a bit thicker which means I will have to bake them for a little longer but that’s fine. I rarely use my 9″ pans as it is, so don’t freak out and buy a 10″ one unless you plan on making a lot of skinny pies.

Press the crumbs onto the bottom and up the sides of the pan. I may have gone a bit too high up the sides. Crack pies are pretty low-profile.

Now, in a bowl (don’t use a mixer for this as you’ll beat in too much air), whisk together 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar, 3/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons brown sugar, and 1/3 cup plus 1 teaspoon powdered milk (if you are unfamiliar with powdered milk, you can usually find it in the coffee/tea aisle of the grocery store).

Melt 1 cup butter (it’s a lot, I know) and stir into it 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons heavy (whipping) cream and 1 teaspoon vanilla.

Gently whisk the butter/cream into the sugar/powdered milk.

Then grab your 8 egg yolks. I am so pleased with how these fit into my storage container. It’s highly satisfying.

Ever-so-gently whisk the yolks into the rest of the mixture, careful again not to mix in too much air (fluffy crack pie filling will puff up and be way not as good).

Divide the filling between the two crusts.

The recipe told me to bake the pies one at a time, but as it involves temperature changes I decided it would be a waste of energy to do so, so I did them both at once. Bake the pies for 15 minutes, then lower the heat to 325°F and bake for a further 10 minutes, until the surface of the filling is a nice even brown and bubbling. I had to bake the one in the white pan for an extra 5 minutes, simply because it was thicker.

Set the pies on a wire rack to cool and then cover them and shove them into the fridge. Crack pie is meant to be served cold, and even cold it’s gooey, like a giant butter tart. It’s a bit obscene, actually.

Before serving, dust the surface of the pie with icing sugar.

Slice and serve!

The From-Scratch-iest Gluten-Free Pumpkin Pie

Happy Thanksgiving!

Some day I’m gonna be super hardcore, growing my own pumpkins in my magic pumpkin patch and harvesting my own gluten-free flour from the enormous gluten-free flour tree on my massive acreage. Until then, however, I will acquire all my ingredients from fairies, just like everyone else. Or the grocery store. Whichever is more convenient.

Still, there’s a certain satisfaction to be garnered from taking a thing from the absolute start to its completion. For me, for now, that means making things as from scratch as I possibly can. And for this particular recipe, that means pie crust from scratch and pumpkin that I slaughtered and roasted myself. Don’t question my wording on that. Have you ever cut up a pumpkin? Yes, “slaughter” is appropriate.

Let’s start with that, shall we? Look at these beautiful pumpkins. These are NOT carving pumpkins. They are sugar pumpkins or pie pumpkins, specifically grown for their tender sweetness and exactly the sort of thing you want to dismember and roast for this pie.

Give them a good washing to remove any dirt.

Preheat your oven to 350°F and grab yourself a nice big rimmed cookie sheet or baking dish.

Decapitate your pumpkin by gently sawing off its stem.

Cleave the pumpkin in two vertically.

Eviscerate your pumpkin by scooping out the seeds and guts. You can wash and dry the seeds for roasting later on. They’re very good for you but may make you a little gassy. Just sayin’.

Brush the fleshy surfaces of the pumpkin with vegetable oil. If you’re roasting this pumpkin for savoury purposes, then you would probably dust it with salt and pepper as well, but we’re using it for un-savoury purposes (as in, sweet, not nefarious), so you probably shouldn’t do that.

Place the pumpkin halves face-down on the baking sheet and let that roast for about 45-60 minutes (depending on your pumpkin size). If you want this whole thing to go faster, then cut the pumpkin into smaller pieces.

When the pumpkin is done the whole thing can be stabbed easily with a sharp knife.

While that is baking, try to figure out how to scrub the residue off your hands. It’s harder than you think.

Let the pumpkins cool a little bit so you don’t burn yourself, then scoop out the flesh and discard the skins.

I ate some toasted pumpkin seeds while I waited for the pumpkin to cool a little bit more.

I puréed the pumpkin flesh in a food processor to make it extra smooth.

Because fresh pumpkin is more watery than canned pumpkin, you might want to drain it a bit. These mesh bags are actually for picking produce at the farmer’s market, but they’re also perfect strainers for thick substances like mashed pumpkin.

I ended up with about 4 cups pumpkin goo, which is pretty much exactly what I needed for two pies. I shoved it in the fridge for a couple of days before I made the pie.

Now for the crust, which I prepped the night before I made the pie. Gluten-free pie dough still needs to rest, just the same as regular pie dough, so that the flour can absorb all the liquid properly. This recipe, adapted from Martha Stewart, makes one pie shell bottom, so I did it twice.

As with regular pie crust, you still want all your ingredients to be ice cold when you work with them, and you want to handle them as little as possible.

Start by whisking together 1/2 cup gluten-free all-purpose flour, 1/2 cup white rice flour, 1 teaspoon xanthan gum, and 2 teaspoons castor/superfine sugar in a small bowl.

As well, assemble a small pitcher of ice water. Cube 1/2 cup cold butter and put that in a bowl as well. Finally, crack 1 large egg into another bowl and scramble it a little. Shove the water and the egg into the fridge and the butter and flour into the freezer for at least 15 minutes.

When you’re ready to go, dump your flour and your butter into the bowl of your food processor.

Pulse the dough until the butter forms little pea-sized crumbs.

Tip in the egg, as well as 1-2 tablespoons ice water and pulse until the dough clumps together.

I would err on the side of less water as opposed to more. In this batch I think I added 2 tablespoons water and you can see it’s very sticky (gluten-free dough will be stickier by nature, but not this sticky).

So the next time round I used less water and got this more crumbly dough.

Squish your dough into a patty and wrap it in plastic. Let it chill in the fridge for at least an hour, preferably three hours, at best, overnight.

When you’re ready to roll (literally), place a piece of waxed paper on your work surface and lightly dust it with gluten-free flour. Plop your dough patty down and dust that with flour as well.

Place another sheet of waxed paper over top and carefully use a rolling pin to spread out your dough. Work from the inside out, and flip it over and lift up the waxed paper as often as possible so it doesn’t stick in weird wrinkles.

When you’re ready to plop the dough into your 12″ pie pan, remember that the dough will stick more to the waxed paper than regular dough, so you might want to chill it a bit beforehand.

Trim and crimp the edges as usual and chuck it back in the fridge.

If you’re only making one pie, then halve the ingredients for the filling, but if you’re making two (because really, why not make two?), then here’s how you do it. In a large bowl, whisk together 4 cups pumpkin purée, 3 300mL cans sweetened condensed milk (900mL total), 4 large eggs, and 2 tablespoons pumpkin pie spice.

Nice and smooth and sweet!

Pour the filling into your two shells and carefully shove them into the oven (preheated to 425°F) on the same rack, if possible. Bake for 15 minutes at 425°F, then reduce the heat to 350°F and bake for another 35-45 minutes.

They will be done when the middle is almost set and you can jab a knife into the filling about an inch from the crust and it comes out clean.

Set those on a rack to cool completely, then EAT!