Pumpkin

November 24, 2010

Pumpkin

Pies (or is it 2pi?). Hooray!

So, tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Today was an absolutely beautiful day for the day before Thanksgiving. A much better day for pie baking than writing lesson plans. Definitely. So, I got up and made 2 batches of pie crusts before 9:30 a.m.

And, after the admission a few days ago that I didn't use enough butter, here's my solution:

I use Martha Stewart's pie crust recipe. It's the best one my aunt, who is kind of the pie queen of my family, has found. I don't use a food processor though, I just use a pasty blender.

Good morning pumpkins!

Then, time to run last minute errands with mom. Oh, and see friends who are also home on break. It's always nice to catch up at Thanksgiving.

The rest of the afternoon: listening to piano hymns on pandora radio and baking pies. Completely from scratch. Well, not straight-from-the-farm-from-scratch, but close.

That involved baking the two sugar pumpkins I spoke of before. It was quite an experience. Cutting them was a challenge, even with a larger set of knives at my disposal.

They basically looked like squash when they were done.

And, of course, there were the seeds to roast. Yum. They kind of got bumped out of the oven by the pies though. They had to wait a while.

But, meanwhile, I made apple caramel pie.

By the way, I have a photographer now that I'm at home -- my dad had fun taking pictures while I was baking amidst his cranberry-making. I'm pretty sure if "canned cranberry sauce" was even mentioned at our family's Thankgiving, we would never be invited back. (No, not really, but it's pretty despised.)

I appreciated his photography services though. Who knows how many hours I would have been baking the pies otherwise.

I'm not sure if the apple caramel pie recipe can be divulged. It may be a family secret. I'll let you know when I find out.

All I can say is that it's pretty exciting and yummy.

Rolling out the crusts wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Notice the mess of my sleeve that I managed to make. Hahaha.

I managed to get covered basically from head to toe in flour. Of course. It wouldn't be baking any other way.

Then, it was time to scoop out the flesh of the pumpkins and make the pie.

The spices in pumpkin pie spice actually make a very pretty neutral color palate. I was impressed.

Then, on to pouring and into the oven.

It looks pretty. Let's hope it tastes as good.

Well, actually, there were two mini-pies I made from the leftovers. And we ate them after dinner. So, I know it's tasty. Very different from your average pumpkin pie. I used a recipe from Simply Recipes. Yum!!!