pumpkin pie contest

since I'm unable to win a pie contest where the participants are "other people," I decided to have a pie contest with myself. I totally won.

this year for Thanksgiving dessert, my mother is making a chocolate-y thing and my aunt is making apple pie. I'm the one who should get to make apple pie, since I've been diligently, painstakingly perfecting my recipe for over two years now. Maybe my family heard about my staggering loss at the annual Halloween apple pie making contest.

Just to recap, last year I was convinced I lost because, unlike some people, I didn't let the Pillsbury dough boy make my crust. This year I lost by an even huger margin, despite using a store-bought crust.

sooooo anyways, i basically suck at making apple pies that people like, yet I decided to try my hand at making pumpkin pie, which I don't even like. (My dad and grandfather like it though). Since I never made it before, I looked at dozens of PP recipes online, confused them all in my brain, then made two different recipes and let The People choose which was better.

PP1 was based loosely on a combination of the recipe from the can of pumpkin and the aforementioned "research." It involved a can of pumpkin, the usual spices and some salt and flour, 3 eggs, 3/4 cup of brown sugar, 2/3 cup of maple syrup, and 1 1/4 cup of half and half. I mixed them all together, poured it into the crust and baked it at 350 for a little over an hour. I had to cover the crust with aluminum foil after about 20 minutes. The middle was a little jiggly when I took it out, so after cooling it on a wire rack, I refrigerated it for about two hours. It came out pretty well, nice and dark, but too sweet for my taste.

PP2, the product of "additional research" plus the recipe from the can of sweetened condensed milk, was a lot more labor-intensive. First I prebaked the crust with foil around the edges. Then I mixed a can of pumpkin, a can of sweetened condensed milk, and the spices - but not the eggs - in a saucepot on the stove and cooked for about 15 minutes. I brought it almost to a boil and then turned off the heat and let it cool and thicken before beating in 2 eggs. I have no idea why I waited to add the eggs, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I put it in the crust and baked it at 425 for 15 minutes (with foil already on the edges) and then turned the heat down to 350 for another 40 minutes, and cooled it on a wire rack.

PP2 looked much lighter and the filling was a lot less dense, but the texture was a lot better and more even. I'm sure that was due to cooking the pumpkin before putting it in the oven. It was also a lot less sweet, which I like, but the maple flavor of PP1 was really nice compared to the canned white sugar flavor of sweetened condensed milk. I can't believe modern chemistry hasn't come up with a sweetened condensed maple milk yet. If any Future Homemakers of America are reading this, consider SCMM development and testing as a possible final project. Now stop reading and get back in the kitchen!

so The People's votes were pretty much split down the middle at work today - I think they were just happy to taste pies instead of reducing toxics. So for Thanksgiving, I think I'm going to try a combination of the two recipes, somehow incorporating the mapley deliciousness of PP1 into the fluffy better-cookedness of PP2. And I'll take pictures, because these pies are a gorgeous vision to behold.