the best pumpkin pie. ever.

I love pumpkin pie. I start thinking about it in September and practically count down the days until Thanksgiving, so that I can eat as much of it as possible.

I've made a pumpkin pie every Thanksgiving for the last several and none of them have been quite right. Well, Thanksgiving is more than a month behind us but this year's pie was finally right, thanks to my friend Eve's recipe. I made one little tweak to her recipe, to suit my own taste (see the brandy section), but otherwise the recipe is the same.

Since American Thanksgiving is a few days away, I thought I'd finally post this. We're doing a Thanksgiving repeat this weekend because some of our friends were away for the meal we had at our apartment and I'm going to make this all over again. I only hope it's as good as I thought it was last month!

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Brandied (or Whisky-ed) Pumpkin Pie (via Eve Rockett, via The Vancouver Sun)

Pastry for a 9 inch single pie crust (I used this recipe to make my crust.)

1 (398 ml) can pumpkin
1 1/4 cups evaporated milk
3 large eggs
3/4 cup of brown sugar
1 l/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
l/2 tsp. salt
l/2 tsp. ground ginger
l/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
l/4 cup brandy (I used whiskey instead and a tablespoon or two of maple syrup.)

Whipped cream for garnish

Line pie plate with pastry. Trim pastry and leave a l inch overhang. Fold overhang under, pinch to form high fluted edge.

In large bowl beat pumpkin, milk, eggs, brown sugar, cinnamon, salt, ginger and nutmeg with mixer at low speed. Blend until well mixed. Stir in brandy.

Place pie pate on bottom oven rack; pour pumpkin mixture into shell. Bake at 400 F for 35 minutes. Cover pastry edges with foil if pastry browns too quickly.)

Reduce heat to 325F and bake an additional 15 minutes, or until knife inserted in centre comes out clean. Cool pie completely on rack. Refrigerate. Before serving, garnish with whipped cream.

Makes eight servings. 

P.S. I'm not abandoning, this blog ... really I'm not! It's just that things have been wonderfully busy around here and it's unfortunately not the priority it once was. I'm hopeful that I'll be back here more soon, but I'm not really into forcing myself into something that is supposed to be for fun, anyway.