from pumpkin to pumpkin pie.

Rhy went to a Halloween party on the 26th.  She was adorable.  Seriously.  Do I have a picture of her?  Only if I can get her to download the one she took with her phone.  She wore her black dress and used black and orange body paint to make tiger stripes.  It was *awesome*.  She took a pumpkin because there was to be jack-o-lantern carving at the party.

And then she came home at 9:45.  Before the carving began.  That's just what happens when you aren't having fun.  Unfortunately her costume took her more time than she ended up spending at the party.

And so a pumpkin has been sitting on our side table for 9 days.

Rhy has been saying she wants to carve it, then Halloween came and went, so now she said she wants to make a pumpkin pie.  Hello, Google?  Can you help me please?  I really have never been mistaken for Betty Crocker.

So, on Sunday, we cut the top of the pumpkin off.  Rhy got grossed out by pumpkin innards.

We cleaned it out, cut it in half, and baked it.  350 degrees for 1 hour cut side down on an aluminum foil lined cookie sheet (the kind with the sides).  The halves were so big only one would fit on the cookie sheet at a time!

I scraped the soft pumpkin off of the rind (not perfectly though, I'm sure there was more pumpkin pulp to be harvested...), then procrastinated on going to the store.  So the pumpkin got put into a ziplock bag to await its transformation.

Fast forward to Tuesday night, The Night of the Pumpkin Pie.  It took no time at all to vote, so I knew I had time.  First thing I had to do with really pulp-ify the the pumpkin pulp.  I tried using the food processor, but it didn't move the pumpkin around enough to be effective.  So I got out the immersion blender and used it in a way-too-shallow bowl.

After I cleaned pumpkin off of the surfaces around that shallow bowl, I mixed the filling using this recipe:

Suzanne's Old Fashioned Pumpkin Pie

2 cups of pumpkin pulp purée 

1 1/2 cup heavy cream or 1 12 oz. can of evaporated milk

1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar

1/3 cup white sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs plus the yolk of a third egg

2 teaspoons of cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon ground cardamon

1/2 teaspoon of lemon zest

1 good crust

...with a couple of modifications.  I didn't have ground cardamom nor lemon zest.  I added a smidge more cinnamon to make up for the cardamom and zested a cute little clementine in place of the lemon zest.

• Preheat oven to 425°F.
• Mix sugars, salt, and spices, and lemon zest in a large bowl. Beat the eggs and add to the bowl. Stir in the pumpkin purée. Stir in cream. Whisk all together until well incorporated.
• Pour into pie shell and bake at 425°F for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes reduce the temperature to 350°F. Bake 40-50 minutes, or until a knife inserted near the center comes out clean.
• Cool on a wire rack for 2 hours.

The results?

Not bad.  A little too orange-y for my taste, what with the zest of a clementine, but really not bad.  Of course, I'm not the one to ask.  I really only like my Mom's pumpkin pie.  She uses canned pumpkin pie filling.  Which is what I'll do from now on, because the process to get pulp from a real-life pumpkin was more work than it was worth...

But at least the Keurig got cleaned...  :-)

What did Rhy think?  She said it tasted different, but good.  So I would say that's a win.  :-)