Pumpkin Cream Pie

Last week Garrett and I started watching the Throwdown Thanksgiving episode with Bobby Flay vs. Pioneer Woman. While watching it I was browsing through her site looking for a dessert to make for a dinner party, we were attending on Sunday, and I came across her version of Pumpkin Pie. It's a pumpkin pie of sorts made with pudding and whipped cream in a graham cracker crust, and it is amazing.

On The Pioneer Woman site she gives her beautifully photographed step by step instructions, so I'll just let you go there to check it out. But you start with vanilla cook and serve pudding and make it with half and half and heavy whipping cream, cinnamon, nutmeg and ground cloves. (I omitted the cloves because I didn't have any. We didn't miss them.) You cook the pudding until it thickens then add in pumpkin puree. I could have stopped right here and ate this as a pumpkin pudding. It was so delicious. I had to stop myself if I wanted to have any left to put in the actual pie. To the pudding mixture you add whipping cream that has been whipped up with brown sugar, hence the name pumpkin cream pie. You place all this in your crust and chill, chill, chill. It definitely needs to be cold.

This dessert went over very well at the dinner party. I didn't leave with any leftovers. I was a little sad about that, so tonight I was feeding a few people dinner and Brian and I both decided that we would be more than ok eating pumpkin cream pie again for dessert. So I whipped up another one this morning. On round two, when I went to the store I couldn't find the small pack of pudding, so I used the bigger box. I used a little eighth grade math and set up a few proportions to adjust the cream, half and half and pumpkin to account for a larger amount of pudding. It turned out just as good as the first. I might consider using the larger box instead, it filled the pie crust a little better.

Another difference between making round one and round two was the length of time I cooked the crust. The first time I cooked it for eight minutes and the crust was very crumbly when I tried to serve it. So round two I cooked it for ten minutes and the crust was very hard to cut making it equally hard to serve. So take your pick, I think I prefer the softer crust to the harder. But do note that they tasted exactly the same.

Brian and I are finishing the Throwdown episode as I type this, so I don't know if Pioneer Woman won, but I'd be willing to bet if she used this pie as her dessert she would have it in the bag!

Pumpkin Cream Pie