Pumpkin Pie a la Nero Wolfe
Pie pie pie pie, pie pie, pie pie pie pie! What better Thanksgiving post than pie?
We floated several ideas about desserts for Thanksgiving Oop Nord but in the end you gotta have da pumpkin pie eh. So we got us a pumpkin and off we went. Again I am too lazy to take a pic of the recipe in the book so block quoting will have to do.
Pumpkin Pie
INGREDIENTS
4 large eggs
2 cups pureed pumpkin
1 cup light brown sugar
1 Tablespoon black strap molasses
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup light cream
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon nutmegINSTRUCTIONS
Beat the eggs and stir all the ingredients together well. Pour into unbaked pie shell, and bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes. Lower heat to 350 degrees, and bake 30 to 40 minutes longer until done. No top crust is necessary, but it is neither forbidden nor untraditional to add one. (Makes 1 pie)
PRODUCTION NOTES
1. Top crust? OK, I like “but it is neither forbidden nor untraditional to add one” like there is some sort of pie police looking for illegal top crust pumpkin pies. Also…where is it that people traditionally put a top crust on pumpkin pie?
2. When MomQ was rolling out the crust she asked what size pie we were making. As far as I could figure out, we were making a 1 sized pie which is, in my experience, odd. They usually tell you how big the pie is going to be, or direct you to a pie crust recipe which then tells you how big the pie is. Neither is true here, although I just now found a recipe for pie crust in the Nero Wolfe book. It makes a 9 inch pie crust.
3. We may have used more pumpkin than the called for 2 cups because we had one meaty pumpkin. Also the pie filling was a bit more watery than I was comfortable with so I chucked in more pumpkin. We did not puree it but we cooked the beegeebus outta the pumpkin and scooped the meat so I’m calling that good.
4. Spices! We doubled ’em. That’s pretty much how I make pie anyway (it was MomQ’s idea to double the spices so I’m not the spice crack crazy in the equation here).
5. Speaking of my pie, I posted a recipe for pie from pumpkins a while back. Of all the Nero Wolfe recipes, this one was the least impressive to me…probably because I’ve been making pumpkin pie from mashed pumpkin for years. Oddly I thought my recipe differed only in dark corn syrup versus Wolfe’s molasses but it appears as if my recipe is quite a bit different. I can’t say which is the better pie since they are both really tasty so I might have to have a pie off in the future. Mmmm pie.
2009: Because the zombies are not allowed on the floor without supervision they had to stay on the counter. This pleased them not.
2008: I’m going to have to decide whether 3 turkeys is the magic number or if 3 turkeys is one more turkey than my laziness can tolerate.
2007: JSFR: ChocoRoll
2006: JSFR: NY Sable Black Cocoa
2005: I should plan a pie-off, that would be tasty.
2004: Heh, guess what I didn’t do yesterday? 2 boo points if you said “posted”
2003: It’s the one that translates into: Holy CRAP! December is almost here and I have NO IDEA what I’m getting for Christmas presents!