Pumpkin Pie

After using a giant pumpkin as a Halloween prop (see it here) I thought I should take it home and make good use of it. Off to the kitchen I went!

 Pumpkin pie is so underrated here, I made some last Halloween (although it went a weird, green colour) and although it's an odd texture, it's really super tasty! It's also pretty simple to make, here's what you need:

• 750g pumpkin , peeled
• 350g sweet shortcrust pastry (I cheated and used a ready made one)
• plain flour , for dusting
• 140g brown sugar
• ½ tsp salt
• ½ tsp nutmeg 
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 2 eggs , beaten
• 25g butter , melted
• 175ml milk 

First preheat the oven to 180C. Now, boil the pumpkin until it's lovely, soft and gooey. Then drain it and stick it in a bowl to cool. Then roll out your pastry and cover a greased, loose bottomed cake tin (it makes it so much easier to get it out of the tin, trust me!), add in some parchment paper and baking beans, then bake for 15 minutes, take it out and let it cool.

Once the pastry it out of the oven, crank up the temperature to 200C. In a bowl, mix together the sugar, salt, nutmeg and cinnamon, then add the beaten eggs, milk and butter. Once you've mixed all of that in, whack in the pumpkin and give it a good mix. Then all you need to do it fill the pastry case with this pumpkin filling and get it in the oven. Keep the high temperature for the first 10 minutes, then reduce it back down to 180C and leave it to bake for another 30-40 minutes.

The filling will go all lovely and golden when it's ready to come out of the oven, when it's done, get it on to a cooling rack and leave it to cool. Here's mine below with a piece of pumpkin loaf (recipe is on it's way)...

It's really tasty eaten warm, cold or even re-heated in the microwave, apparently..