Pumpkin Pie + Variation

I made two pies yesterday, one pumpkin and one from Paula Deen's The Lady and Sons Savannah Country Cookbook called a Thanksgiving Pie.

I beat the pumpkin shortage by having had a giant can of pumpkin in my cabinet for the past several months. There is really no keeping me from my pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving. It turns out that for Thanksgiving dinner I'm actually making a lemon gooey butter cake, and it seemed a shame not to make pies at some point.


This is the pumpkin pie. I made it from a recipe in my beaten up and broken copy of the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook. It actually needed a bit more evaporated milk, but I'm assuming that adding whipped cream will solve this just fine (it's just a smidge to "spicy" for me - by this I mean full of spices rather than spicy-hot). Then it was on to the Thanksgiving Pie!

Ingredients:

3 eggs
1 cup dark corn syrup
1/2 cup sugar
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, melted
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup chopped pecans
1 9-inch unbaked pie shell
Whipped cream

Preheat oven to 350. With hand beater, beat eggs well. Beat in corn syrup, sugar, butter, pumpkin, and vanilla until well blended.


Arrange pecans in bottom of pie shell.


Slowly pour egg mixture over them. (As I learned, if you are using an aluminum pie plate, it would really be best to do this on the oven rack.)


Bake for 1 hour or until knife inserted 1 inch from edge comes out clean. Served with whipped cream.

I didn't even use the whipped cream, and this pie was amazing. It might even be better than regular pumpkin pie. It's like all the best parts of pumpkin pie and pecan pie combined into one. Has a texture sort of like custard. I'm trying to wait until after dinner tonight to eat another piece, but I might not make it! I was planning to take both pies to work tomorrow, but I may hold onto this one out of selfishness...

Also, I did not burn either pie crust! This is unusual for me, because I almost always burn my crust. I remembered to put foil around them before putting them in the oven. I think it also may be because I followed Alton Brown's advice and used aluminum pans instead of a glass pie plate.

I still used the refrigerated dough that you unroll for these, but the next time I make a pie, I'm hoping to be brave enough to try homemade crust. We'll see how that goes.

Finally, the secret ingredient this week for the Iron Chef Blogger Challenge is cranberries! It was my week to pick, and I wanted to do something with a bit of a Thanksgiving theme. I'm excited to see how it turns out.