Pumpkin pie

Happy Thanksgiving! Here is my pumpkin pie recipe.
 
This is my great-aunt Jessie's recipe. I have it on a photo-copied hand written recipe from my great-grandmother. It makes a damn good pie. My great-grandmother and her sisters grew up in rural North Carolina on farms and they married farmers. They made their pies from scratch, which meant real pumpkins, so therefore do I. The recipe is actually annotated for canned pumpkin, but the original was fresh pumpkin.

For this pie, I used a (gasp) store bought crust. I can count the times on one hand I have used a store bought crust, and one of the other times was for a last minute pie last month and they come in pairs, so for this I used the other languishing in my freezer. I even had a nice homemade pie dough in the same freezer, but I just needed to get the frozen dough out so I don't have to face the fact that I actually bought it.

I substitute coconut milk for my milk allergic husband, but the recipe calls for evaporated milk and that is what I used before I met my husband. It does make the pie more velvety. Feel free to use it our sub-coconut milk like I do.

For my pumpkins, I halve them and bake them with the seeds in (keeps the flesh from getting crusty). Then when they are done I scoop out the seeds and the strings, then I scoop the flesh into portions for pies, breads, soup, etc and freeze it. For this recipe I used the last container of frozen pumpkin from last season.

pumpkin, sugar, eggs, milk (coconut), salt, spices, four, pie crust

mix pumpkin, milk, sugar, salt, and spices

blend well

then add eggs and just mix in

add flour last and stir until the clumps are gone

pour into a pre-baked crust (with custard pie always pre-bake at least 20 min)

bake until barely jiggly in the center

let cool completely on a rack, in fact best if cooled at least six hours

serve with some luscious whipped cream or cream of coconut and some coffee

Thanks farm girls!