Fall and Pie Cravings

I love fall, by far my favourite season.  The crisp cool air, crunchy bight leaves on the ground and the start of what I consider baking season.  With an abundance of apples, pears and pumpkins I can barely contain my baking excitement.   With the cooler weather our kitchen has seen a lot more activity and while we did not have a traditional Thanksgiving meal we did get together with family. The only thing I was really missing and craving was pumpkin pie.

I tried at several times while out with friends to find it on menus but no luck and decided to satisfy my itch with a homemade pie.  Pie dough and I have not always gotten along so after some internet research I settled on crust advertised as "no-fail" and hoped for the best.  The same website had a filling with well rounded  spices.  I find recipes that use just cinnamon, while tasty, are a little lacking in depth and chose this recipe as it also used cloves, ginger, nutmeg and cardamon.  The result was a flaky crust with a rich filling and I went all the way in indulgence and topped it off with a generous dollop of whipped cream, soooo goood.

Pumpkin Pie

Crust:
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
1 cup unsalted butter, cold and cubed
1/2 cup full fat sour cream

Filling:

2 eggs plus third egg yolk
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup white sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground cardamon
1/2 tsp lemon zest
2 cups canned pumpkin puree
1 1/2 cups heavy cream

Preheat oven to 425F

In a bowl combine flour, salt, and sugar.  Add cubed butter and cut into flour mixture until a course mixture with some butter chunks.

Add sour cream and mix into flour and butter mixture with fork.

Using hands form dough into ball.  (mine was little dry and I added a touch of cold water to bing it all together)

Cut dough into two and form into disks.  Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. (I just needed one so threw the second disk in the freezer)

After 30 minutes remove dough from fridge.  On floured surface roll out to 12-14 inch diameter. (if dough has been in fridge longer than 2hrs, let it sit outside of fridge for 5 minutes before rolling.

Transfer rolled dough to pie plate and crimp edges if desired.  Place prepared crust back in fridge until filling is ready.

For the filling, beat eggs and yolk in a bowl.

Add sugars, spices, salt, and zest to eggs and stir to combine.

Add pumpkin puree.

Mix in cream.

Remove prepared crust from fridge and pour in filling.

Bake for 15 minutes at 425F and then reduce heat to 350F and bake another 45-50 minutes, an inserted knife in pie should come out clean. Cool for about two hours on wire rack (Colin could only wait an hour before caving and digging in and we enjoyed our pie still sightly warm)

Happy Fall!