Grandma's Famous Pumpkin Pie Recipe - The Recipe Critic (2024)

FAQs

What makes pumpkin pie taste like pumpkin pie? ›

The pie is generally flavored with pumpkin pie spice, a blend that includes cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves or allspice. The pie is usually prepared with canned pumpkin, but fresh-cooked pumpkin can be used.

INGREDIENTS. FILLING: PUMPKIN, SUGAR, MILK, EGGS, CORN SYRUP, MODIFIED FOOD STARCH, NONFAT MILK, SPICE, SALT, CAROB BEAN GUM, CARRAGEENAN, DEXTROSE. CRUST: WHEAT FLOUR, SHORTENING BUTTER BLEND (PALM OIL, BUTTER [CREAM, SALT]), PALM OIL, WATER, SOYBEAN OIL, SALT, DEXTROSE, YEAST, MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES.

Choose The Right Kind

For cooking, you'll want to use sugar pumpkins (also called pie or sweet pumpkins), which are small and round. Long Island Cheese pumpkins, which are more oblong and can look like a wheel of cheese, are also good to eat.

Although she doesn't often stray from traditional flavors, her pumpkin pie recipe is actually pretty unique. The classic warm spices — cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg — are there, but what makes Ina's recipe special is the addition of orange zest and dark rum.

During my testing of pumpkin pies, I tried lots of different milk options – heavy whipping cream, regular milk (I used 2% in my testing), sweetened condensed milk and evaporated milk. Ultimately, I found heavy whipping cream to be the best. It produced the creamiest pie in my opinion.

As the name suggests, sweetened condensed milk makes the pie sweeter and gives it a denser, creamier texture. Evaporated milk, on the other hand, yields a lighter, airier result. Evaporated milk isn't sweetened either, which is why you can't simply swap one thickener for the other.

filling: pumpkin, sugar, water, nonfat dry milk, eggs, modified corn starch, spice, soybean oil, salt. crust: enriched wheat flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), soybean oil and hydrogenated soybean oil, water, dextrose, salt, dough conditioner (sodium metabisulfite).

Each pie's crust is pressed into the pie tin by hand at a Costco central bakery commissary, but a pie-filling device takes it from there. The pumpkin pie filling used to be ladled in by hand, but in 2017, Costco made the switch to a machine, which helped cut down the production time drastically.

It says it contains: pumpkin, sugar, water, eggs, enriched wheat flour (wheat flour, ferrous sulfate, niacin, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), canola and/or soybean oil, nonfat milk, corn syrup, contains 2% or less of the following: salt, spices, corn sugar, mono & diglycerides, modified food starch.

Stoneware is the poorest conductor of heat out of this lineup of pie plates, as it heats up the most slowly. However, it does distribute heat evenly and maintains heat well once it is hot. Stoneware is a good choice for more delicate pies like pumpkin or custard.

What are the grey pumpkins for pie? ›

Ranging between 10-25 pounds with minimal strings inside and lovely sweet flesh for pie. Jarrahdale are the pale blue-greenish grey pumpkins and my favorite for decorating. They weight 6-10 pounds each, have basically no strings, and a fruity delicious golden flesh.

Store-bought pumpkin pie mix (sometimes labeled "pumpkin pie filling") is a shortcut for making homemade pumpkin pie. It contains puréed pumpkin plus added spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves. It also contains sugar and other chemical additives.

Patti Labelle's Easy Pumpkin Pie Recipe- Southern Soul Food

Distinctive dishes are precisely prepared, using fresh ingredients.

While the canned pumpkin puree is just canned pumpkin, the Libby "Canned Pumpkin Pie Filling" also has sugar syrup, natural flavoring, salt and spices.

Pies with too much evaporated milk formed blisters on top.

Though the interior of the filling had a great, creamy texture. The flavor was ever-so-slightly muted and had a hint of milkiness to it.

Pie pumpkins, also called sugar pumpkins, usually weigh 1 to 6 pounds. Their flesh is denser and sweeter that the bigger ones, which are called carving or jack-o'-lantern pumpkins. The biggies have a moister, softer interior with a bigger seed cavity, and the flesh tends to be stringier.

It sounds like the custard broke, or curdled. Custard curdles from too much heat causing proteins to clump. Either you baked the pie too long or at too high a heat.

PiesTarts – If you've ever thought a tart was pie, you're forgiven because they're incredibly similar. The main difference is that tarts only have a bottom crust, and the crust is much thicker than a pie crust.