Pumpkin Pie for Thanksgiving and Christmas

Autumn is here, and with it comes pumpkins. When you go looking for a pumpkin, you'll find all shapes and sizes. But what is best for a good pumpkin pie? The answer is the sugar or pie pumpkin. The big pumpkins you see everywhere this time of year tend to be too large and stringy for baking. But the sugar pumpkin, is small and sweet. It's perfect for that Thanksgiving pie.To use these fall treasures in a pie, you must take that orange ball and turn it into filling. A medium sized sugar pumpkin of about 4lbs, will yield approximately 1 1/2-cups of mashed pumpkin (just enough for our recipe). To turn your pumpkin into filling, try following these cooking guidelines.
To Bake:
Cut the pumpkin in half and discard the stem section and stringy insides. Save the seeds to dry and roast; they make a tasty snack. In a shallow baking dish place the two halves face down and cover with foil. Bake in a preheated 375* oven for about 1 1/2 hours for a medium-sized sugar pumpkin. Once the baked pumpkin has cooled, scoop out the flesh and puree in a food processor or mash with a potato masher.
Now that you know how to make your own pumpkin puree, you might want to make extra to freeze so you can enjoy the great taste of fall pumpkins all year around. They will keep in the freezer for a good 6 months.
Of course now that you have the pumpkin puree, now you need a good pie recipe. That's where we can help. We just happen to have a recipe that we consider pretty good.

Pumpkin Pie 1/2-cup milk 1/2-cup light cream (or evaporated milk) 2-eggs 1-1/2-cups canned or fresh pureed pumpkin 2/3-cup brown sugar 1-tsp cinnamon 1/2-tsp salt 1/2-tsp nutmeg 1/2-tsp ginger 1/2-tsp ground cloves 1/4-tsp allspice 1-tsp vanilla extract 1-9" unbaked pie shell

Preheat oven to 425*
Put all ingredients into a blender and process
Pour into pie shell
Bake at 425* for 20 minutes, then reduce heat to 275*
Bake another 35-45 minutes longer or until knife inserted comes out clean
Cool to room temperature before serving

Now if you would like to try a different pie for Thanksgiving, and we do have other great pies that you should consider, we put together a list of pies that we think will satisfy all

Pie Recipes