Pumpkin Pie
An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 45 minutes
For Pumpkin Pie Crust
- 120g/4ozs around 15 Malt o Milk biscuits (can use Graham crackers)
- 45g/1.6ozs or around 5 gingernut biscuits (can use Graham crackers)
- 3 tablespoons browned butter, melted
For Pumpkin Pie Filling
- 500g/1.1lb roasted pumpkin puree (see recipe here on how to make pumpkin filling) or tinned pumpkin pie filling
- 200ml/7flozs evaporated milk
- 50ml/1.7flozs pure or thickened cream
- 3 large eggs, room temperature
- 125g/4ozs light brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
- 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon fine salt
Step 1 - First make the crumb crust. Preheat oven to 160C/320F fan forced and grease a glass pie dish (mine was a 1.4qt capacity, 22.5cm/9" diameter pie dish). Process all of the biscuits until very fine in texture. Thermomix directions: 10 seconds, speed #10. Mix with the melted browned butter until you get a dampish consistent texture. Press into a glass pie dish and make sure that the corners are not too thick. I use a glass to smooth it out. It will seem like you need more butter but you don't. Bake for 5 minutes and the remove from oven.
Step 2 - Blend the pumpkin puree, evaporated milk, cream, eggs, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, nutmeg and salt until smooth in texture. Thermomix directions: 15 seconds, speed #8. Gently pour it over the crumb crust (do this slowly so as not to dislodge the crumbs). Prick any air bubbles and slide into the oven and bake for 25 minutes. Turn around halfway and bake for another 20-25 minutes. The centre will be a bit wobbly but will set upon cooling. Cool in the oven with the door ajar. You can eat it warm or refrigerate and eat cold with some whipped cream and extra cinnamon sprinkled on top.
Personal Note
Speaking of Autumn, now that the days are getting shorter I have to photograph everything really quickly. This puts a bit of pressure on things as the light disappears early (I only really shoot in natural light) but in our new house I have a few options. My studio faces west so the light lasts for a bit longer and I can shoot until 4-4:30pm (in our previous apartment, it faced east and I had to get photos done by 3pm or else). Most of the windows downstairs face west but one of the best windows in terms of light in on the east facing side of the house.
Unfortunately the venetian blind is broken there (we didn't realise it was broken until the day we moved in!) so I don't tend to use it much in summer but in autumn and winter when I need more options I decided to try my hand shooting there. It has the most beautiful light there so I pulled back the broken blind and stared at the window. The window frame was now white.
I asked Mr NQN, "Did you paint this window white?" and he shook his head. "It used to be brown," I said to him showing him a picture of a lemon crunch cake I had shot there a couple of years ago where the window frame was clearly brown. We deduced that our painter must have painted that but I hadn't asked him to and neither had Mr NQN. And a year on, we hadn't even noticed it!
So tell me Dear Reader, do you know every corner of your house? Do you ever notice something that has been changed a while back? And do you like pumpkin pie?
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