Friday, December 5, 2008

{T-giving} Molasses Spice Pumpkin Pie


If you, like me, prefer your pumpkin pie to be dense, dark, and spicy, this is the recipe for you. I first made it several years ago, after finding it in The Spice Cookbook, a vintage cookbook from 1964. It is the single most important recipe of my Thanksgiving dinner.

The cookbook's title page
The book is packed with information, charts, tips, and delicious recipes made with spices from all over the world.

The cookbook's endpapers

Molasses-Pumpkin Pie
from The Spice Cookbook

¾ cup sugar
1 T. flour
½ tsp. salt
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp ground cloves
¼ tsp ground black pepper
¼ cup unsulphured molasses
2 cups mashed cooked pumpkin
3 large eggs
1 cup undiluted evaporated milk
9 inch unbaked 1 crust pie shell (I used the Cook's Illustrated pie crust)

1. Mix together the first 6 ingredients.

2. Add the next 3 ingredients. Mix well.

3. Stir in milk.

4. Pour into unbaked pie shell

5. Bake in preheated 400°F oven for 40 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Enjoy the pie with or without whipped cream. It's great either way. We always make to sure to have lots of this pumpkin pie, and in the days after Thanksgiving I enjoy it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

This pie is a specialty of my daughter A.L.E., who said this year: "I don't know why everyone doesn't use molasses in pumpkin pie." Honestly, as good as the pie tastes, I agree with her.

4 comments:

Katrina said...

My husband loves his pumpkin pie, one for Thanksgiving and one for Christmas every year, then he's good until the next year. So he's had his Thanksgiving pie and I'm going to make this one for Christmas. (I always just make the Libby recipe). I'm not even going to tell him and see if he says anything.
I like pumpkin pie, too, but a lot of others trump it for me. He, on the other hand, prefers pumpkin.
Thanks, Nancy!

Megan said...

I'll bet the molasses takes this pie from *regular old pumpkin pie* to *really excellent pumpkin pie*. What a great idea.

Cathy said...

Oh, this looks so good, Nancy! I've always loved the flavor of pumpkin pie; it's the texture that I've been unsure about with some pies that I've had. I like that yours is "dense" -- I know that I'd much prefer that texture to, say, the Dorie pumpkin filling in her twofer pie. The Spice Cookbook looks really interesting. I know that my hubs would enjoy it too -- he listed "cartography" as an interest in his high school yearbook.

Di said...

That looks like a neat cookbook. I love making things with spices.