Every year my Mum grows a gorgeous patch of pumpkins and part of our Halloween excitement and ritual  is going over and picking out the biggest one to carve. Every year I am taken a back to how beautiful they look growing in the field and just how huge they are. This years one weighed in at 4st 10lb (66lb) !

So after the carving has been done, a task taken on skilfully every year by Hubby with the help of Luca, there is loads and loads of pumpkin left, which I am sad to say we usually throw in the bin as we thought none of us liked it.

Not this year though, as thanks to my wonderful soup making skills we realised that we do actually really like pumpkin and since this discovery I have decided to see how much of the beast of a pumpkin I can use.

Now the first thing that always comes to mind is Pumpkin Pie, just the thought of it sounds wrong, but after much discussion amongst fellow foodie friends on Twitter I actually settled on a recipe and made a pie.

The big discussion was, which recipe to follow, they really don’t vary that much as such, but the big debate is wether to use, double cream, sour cream, creme fraiche, evaporated milk, condensed milk, every one seemed to have a preference. I settled on evaporated milk this time, but think I’ll use condensed milk next time as I think the extra sweetness would be lovely.

The result was a really lovely light pie which we had with vanilla ice cream. Luca and I liked it, Hubby said that it was disgusting, but then he really is a dessert hater and thinks that fruit or vegetables should not be put in pies, so we will ignore that, so if you, unlike my Hubby, fancy the idea of pumpkin pie here is the recipe that I used. Its very simple and straight forward and the only decision you have to make is which cream or milk you want to use. I think its just down to personal choice and how sweet your tooth is.

Buon appetito

(I have posted the recipe for pastry here, but I must confess that on this occasion I used shop brought ready made. One recipe I found also suggested using a ready made pastry case, but I find these a little dry)

Ingredients – serves 16


For the filling:
500g (1 1/4 lb) mashed, cooked pumpkin
1 (410g) tin evaporated milk
2 eggs, beaten
175g (6 oz) dark brown soft sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt

For the pastry:
350g (12 oz) plain flour
1 teaspoon salt
200g (7 oz) butter
125ml (4 fl oz) cold water

Preparation method

1.  Preheat oven to 200 C / Gas mark 6.

2.  Halve pumpkin and scoop out seeds and stringy portions. Cut pumpkin into chunks. In a saucepan over medium heat, cover the pumpkin with water and bring to the boil. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 30 minutes or until tender. Drain, cool and remove the peel.

3.  Return pumpkin to the saucepan and mash with a potato masher. Drain well, and measure 500g of the mashed pumpkin; reserve any excess pumpkin for another use.

4.  Prepare pastry by mixing together the flour and salt. Rub butter into flour, and add 1 tablespoon cold water to mixture at a time. Mix and repeat until pastry is moist enough to hold together.

5.  With lightly floured hands, shape pastry into a ball. On a lightly floured board, roll pastry out to barely a .25cm thickness. Transfer to a 20 or 23cm pie dish, gently pressing pastry into the bottom. Cut off any excess pastry hanging over the sides of the dish, and pinch pastry securely around the inner edge.

6.  In a large bowl with mixer speed on medium, beat pumpkin with evaporated milk, eggs, sugar, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and salt. Mix well. Pour into a prepared pie dish. Bake 40 minutes or until a knife inserted in the centre comes out clean.