Traditional Halloween fare, this one’s made with fresh pumpkin and has a glorious praline topping.

What a wonderful Indian Summer this is

I love that deep orange colour pumpkins have. This pie is to celebrate two weeks of driving though glorious autumn landscapes to and fro work – starting the day with a misty orange sunrise and closing it again with a warm orange sun setting over the old river landscape I love. Pumpkin Pie fits the mood perfectly.

Making pumpkin mash from scratch

As I’ve never seen canned pumpkin here, but small pumpkins are to be found at the local nature food store, this pie gets a fresh pumpkin filling.
I started out with cutting a 800 g pumpkin in four, removed seeds and strings, and peeled the chunks. Cooked them for about 30 minutes. Mashed them and put them through a sieve.

While the pumpkin was cooking, I prepared the pie dough. Combine the flour, sugar and salt with the butter and work it into a crumbly mixture with a blunt knife and fork. Add a spoonfull of buttermilk at a time, and quickly knead it into a ball. Roll it out on a floured surface, then line a pie plate with it. Trim and flute the edge.

Doing a monster batch

This is easy: just mix up pumpkin, maple syrup, egg yolks, yoghurt, sugar and spices. Then add the stiffly whipped egg whites. Pour into the prepared pastry case. Apparenty 450 g pumpkin is too much, so I was able to bake two pies; I corrected the amount in the recipe above.

And baking it

Preheat the oven to 220°C. Bake the pie for about 15 minutes, then lower the tempreature to 170°C, and bake for 35 minutes more. The filling will rise like a soufflé, but this will not last.

While the pie is baking, prepare the topping by mixing sugar with pecans, chocolate, cinnamon and margarine in a bowl. When the pie is done, carefully add the topping and return it to the oven for a good 10 minutes more. This will give a wonderful crunchy caramelized pecan topping.

Leave it to cool in the oven for about two hours. Lovely served with whipped cream.