Pumpkin Pecan Pie
current situation: pie x2
The two pies in one. A pumpkin custard with pecans across the top, which gives you the texture a plain pumpkin pie has never had.
The pecans go on after about twenty minutes in the oven, not at the start. Scattered onto raw liquid filling they sink straight to the bottom and steam; scattered onto a filling that has started to set they sit on the surface and toast.
And the pumpkin gets cooked down in a pan first. Tinned purée is wet, and driving some of that water off in a dry pan for five minutes concentrates the flavour and stops the custard weeping.
- Feeds
- 10
- Hands-on
- 40 minutes
- Bake
- 55 minutes
- Pecans
- On at 20 minutes
What you need
The shell
- 1 blind-baked pastry shell, 9 inch
- 1 egg white, for sealing it
The filling
- 15 oz pumpkin purée, cooked down in a pan
- 3/4 cup dark brown sugar
- 3 eggs plus 1 yolk
- 1 1/4 cups heavy cream
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp ginger
- 1/2 tsp nutmeg, grated
- 1/4 tsp cloves
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp bourbon
On top
- 1 1/4 cups pecan pieces
- 2 tbsp brown sugar
- Whipped cream, to serve
How it goes
1 — Blind bake the shell and seal it with egg white
Baked until dry and pale gold, then brushed with egg white and given two more minutes. That thin cooked layer is waterproofing against a wet custard.
2 — Cook the pumpkin purée down in a dry pan
Five minutes over medium, stirred, until it darkens slightly and stops being loose. A surprising amount of water leaves, and all of it would have made the custard weep.
3 — Bloom the spices in the hot purée
Spices stirred into the pumpkin while it is still in the pan and given a minute. Ground spice heated in fat and moisture tastes twice as strong as spice stirred into a cold mixture.
4 — Cool it before the eggs go in
Off the heat and down to warm. Eggs added to hot purée scramble, and you will see the flecks in the finished pie.
pro tip — If it does scramble, push the whole mixture through a sieve. It is recoverable, once.
5 — Filling in, bake at 375°F for twenty minutes
Poured into the shell and into a hot oven to set the surface before anything goes on it.
6 — Pecans and sugar scattered on, then down to 325°F
Door open, nuts and brown sugar thrown over the half-set surface, oven down, another thirty-five minutes.
7 — Pull it with a wobble the size of a coin
The centre two inches should still move. Baked solid, the custard cracks across the middle as it cools.
8 — Cool three hours, chill if you can
A pumpkin pie needs to be properly cold to slice. Overnight in the fridge is better than the same afternoon.
Pie x2. Whipped cream, no discussion. LFG.