Pumpkin Pie

This recipe comes by way of one of the teachers I had on camp in high school, Ms Bahn.  She introduced myself and my friends to pumpkin pie.  This recipe is delicious and homey, very spicy (as in ginger/cinnamon etc, not chili) and easy to make as well!  The recipe makes a very large volume, so if you only need a little pie for the family you could probably halve the recipe.

Ingredients - makes enough to feed ten people
2 cups cooked pumpkin, mashed
1 tbsp vanilla essence
3 eggs
500g white sugar
1 tbsp salt
3 tbsp flour
4 cups milk
Ground cinnamon and ginger to taste
Puff/shortcrust pastry

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 190 C (375 F).  Cook the pumpkin and mash it.  I steamed my pumpkin and just used a fork to mash it up.

2. Mix the vanilla, eggs, sugar, salt, flour and milk into the pumpkin.  Flavour it to your liking with ground cinnamon and ginger.

3. Prepare your chosen receptacles with puff pastry or shortcrust pastry.  I used some shortcrust pastry and a square casserole dish as well as a cupcake tin.  Make sure that you swipe the dishes/tins with a bit of butter before you put the pastry in because they do tend to stick!

4. Pour the pumpkin mixture into the pastry-lined receptacles and bake.  If you're doing a large pie (like mine in a casserole dish), you'll need about 1 hour but the littler ones in the cupcake tin will only take about 30 minutes.

Depending on your oven and the size of your pies, this will vary so use your own judgement!  When it's done, the pie will be solid but should jiggle a bit when the dish is moved.

(You can make mini pumpkin pies in individual souffle ramekins for easy eating.)

5. Let the pie/s cool and consume at your leisure.  They taste good cold out of the fridge, as well as when they're heated up or straight out of the oven.

Yum!