- Today, we're making one of my all-time holiday favorites,
a pumpkin pie.
This is such an easy and delicious treat.
You are never gonna want to buy a store-bought pie again.
Also, I'll be throwing in
a ton of my pie-making hints and tricks,
because so many easy little tweaks
can make a huge difference.
Okay, let's get started.
To make the pie dough, we're gonna use a food processor,
starting off with 300 grams, or two and a half cups,
of all-purpose flour, right on top of our scale.
If you don't have a scale, measure it out.
But using a kitchen scale is so convenient,
'cause all I have to is dump it out,
and keep going until it says 300 grams.
Close.
There we go.
So easy.
No measuring cups got dirty either.
All right, now it's time for the rest of the ingredients,
except for the butter.
About a quarter of a cup of granulated sugar,
half a teaspoon of sea salt,
two teaspoons of ground cinnamon.
I'm adding spices to the pie crust,
because I love the extra flavor.
Pie crust does not have to be boring.
You can do whatever you want to it.
So add more spices, less spices.
The world is your oyster here.
Two teaspoons.
About a half teaspoon of allspice,
little pinch of cardamom,
and a tiny pinch of nutmeg.
All right, now we're gonna give this a whiz,
just to mix it.
And be careful of these blades.
Don't cut yourself.
Pulse.
(food processor mixing)
Good, we're almost done.
I have two sticks, or 226 grams,
of unsalted butter at room temperature.
And I'm gonna give this
just a little cubing to get it started.
Doesn't have to be perfect little squares.
Just chop it up, so it's in more manageable pieces
for your food processor.
Okay, let's dump that into our food processor now.
Give it a whiz, and you're going to want to mix this
until you have kind of pea-sized granules.
Don't go crazy with the mixer,
because those blades are chopping the butter.
That movement is called kinetic energy.
And what happens is, it's heating up the whole mixture.
And you want the mixture to stay as cold as possible,
so the protein or gluten in the flour doesn't get activated.
Okay.
Now, giving it a whiz, just pulse.
(food processor mixing)
The last step to make the pie crust
is to use some ice water.
Keep it cold.
So I'm gonna take a quarter of a cup out,
and I might not use it all.
You kind of want to just eyeball it and see
when is the dough almost starting to come together,
not come together, but almost there.
Because you're gonna do the rest of the work
with your hands.
So just drizzle it in while you pulse the food processor.
(food processor mixing)
Here's how you know if it's ready.
Carefully, get some of the mixture.
And then put it in your palm,
and squeeze it together.
If it comes together, the dough is done.
Carefully, remove the blade.
If you saw my "How to Make a Biscuit" video,
you know these are very sharp and will cut you really badly.
Now dump out the mixture onto a pastry mat,
or whatever work surface you're using.
Oh, this looks like such a mess.
It's never gonna work.
No, this is perfect.
Watch this.
Isn't that cool? (chuckles)
All you have to do
is just kind of clump it together in your palms.
And you're gonna just knead it a tiny little bit,
not too much, because you want those packets of butter
to stay kind of undisturbed.
So this dough looks ready, but it needs to rest.
So I'm just gonna take this, and add it into a Ziploc bag,
flatten it out into a disk.
You can give it a little bit of a head start with rolling.
Seal it, and now pop it into the fridge
for like half an hour, an hour, overnight.
Just let it warm up a tiny little bit
before you try working it,
otherwise it'll start cracking, 'cause it'll be too cold.
Once your dough is chilled,
flour your work surface,
get that dough out of the bag.
Look at all those specks of butter.
This is gorgeous.
'Kay, place it on and add a little bit more flour.
And here's the deal,
you're gonna roll it out.
Roll in one direction, change directions,
and then move the dough,
otherwise it will totally stick, and you'll be sad.
All right, this looks like it's been rolled out
to about the right thickness,
and you just want to make sure that you have
an inch and a half, or so, more on the edge
than your pie tin.
To transfer it over, you can fold it into quarters,
but I like to roll it on my rolling pin.
So just roll it on.
And then we're gonna roll it onto the pie tin.
And I have a ton extra, so what I'm gonna do
is kind of like just push it down a little bit.
I don't want to stretch the dough, 'cause then it'll shrink.
So just push it into the corners like that.
And now it's time to trim the excess.
With the extra pie dough,
you can either make a delicious snack
by baking it separately,
you can cut it into leaves to decorate the pie,
or you can just save it for later and freeze it.
All right, now it's time to fold our pie crust,.
so fold it under like this.
That way you're not gonna have any weird edge.
It'll be nice and perfectly baked.
Just fold and move along.
If you have a piece here that's a little bit too big,
now you can trim it.
Now, to be honest, this looks totally fine to me,
but you could do a really simple crimp with your fingers
and make it look homey and beautiful.
So just take your thumb and push it in like that.
So kind of crimp it between your thumb and your fingers.
Definitely doesn't have to look perfect,
and you're gonna use an egg wash
to hide any little mistakes that might happen,
so don't worry.
All right, now we're gonna dock the pie crust.
Docking just means you're gonna pierce the pie crust
with a fork all over.
And that lets steam come out,
because this pie crust will get steamy,
and it will bubble up.
No one wants a bubbly pie crust.
If you've ever made a pie, and the pie sinks down,
like just kind of starts melting during the baking process,
it wasn't supported.
To support the pie crust, you can add parchment paper,
and some kind of weight,
or tinfoil and some kind of weight.
All right, so press the foil to the edge.
It's basically going to keep the pie crust
in place during baking.
When it starts to bake, it gets kind of melty,
and it needs to be supported.
So, just press it against here.
There.
And spread your pie weights.
I happen to have a set of pie weights
that were actually my grandmother's.
They last forever.
But if you don't have them, just used dried beans.
People use pea gravel.
Anything is fine,
because it's not gonna come into direct contact
with your food.
And if you don't want to use any foil in the process,
just use parchment paper.
We're gonna pop this into the oven now at 425
for maybe about 10 minutes.
Then we're gonna remove the weights, and the foil,
bake it for another maybe five or 10 minutes.
You can reduce the heat down to 400 at this point.
This is called blind baking your crust.
Basically, you want to bake the crust
before you add that liquid mixture in,
and it won't be as soggy.
If you really hate soggy pie crust,
then you can just brush the bottom with an egg wash,
which is like a mixed up egg
with a little bit of water or cream.
And that'll form a bit of a barrier.
Not foolproof, but it helps a bit more.
Okay, into the oven.
While that pie crust is blind baking,
we're gonna whip up this filling.
It is so easy.
It's just like a one bowl wonder.
Start off with three extra-large eggs,
or large eggs will do to.
Crack 'em in.
Okay, and three eggs.
Give it a quick whisk.
We're gonna add one cup of heavy cream,
half a cup of whole milk,
because we're being health conscious,
quarter cup of granulated sugar, white,
half a cup of brown sugar, packed in.
That just means that you're gonna
press the sugar in a little bit.
And plop it in.
We're also gonna add in a half teaspoon of cinnamon,
a half teaspoon of kosher salt, or sea salt,
whatever you want.
And then I added in a little bit
of allspice, ginger and nutmeg,
kind of like a quarter teaspoon each.
Are we missing anything?
Is that pumpkin? (chuckles)
Let's give this a little whisk first.
I'm adding in a 15 ounce,
or 425 gram, container of pureed pumpkin.
This is not pumpkin pie filling, it's just pumpkin.
Got all that delicious pumpkin out.
Pumpkin has a beautiful color, but really,
a very, very subtle flavor.
That's why you're adding in all those spices.
So a little bit of a whisk there.
For some extra brightness and kind of aromatics,
I'm gonna add in about half of an orange, zested.
Just plop that in.
All right, and finally, because it's the holidays,
I'm adding in about two tablespoons,
like a very rough two tablespoons
of dark rum.
Okay, now we're gonna whisk it up nicely.
All right, it's all whipped up, and technically we're done,
but I have another hack for you.
If you put this fairly cold mixture into the oven,
the outside will bake,
the inside will be so cold, it'll take a long time to bake.
And meanwhile, the outside is over-baking,
the outside is burning.
Not a good scene.
So to compensate, what we're gonna do
is warm this pie mixture up in a saucepan over low heat.
Don't burn it, don't cook the eggs. (chuckles)
But let's warm it up, so it's warm to the touch.
Let's pour that in,
and transfer to low heat.
Okay, plop that on.
And now whisk.
This is ready.
Let's transfer it to our pie crust.
My pie crust is out of the oven, cooled so I can handle it,
and it's blind baked.
Perfect.
Now I'm gonna add in my custardy filling
right after I give this crust a nice egg wash.
Giving an egg wash will give you a beautiful golden color.
Otherwise, the pie crust will look a little sad. (chuckles)
I'm just telling you ahead of time.
For an egg wash, crack one egg into a small bowl,
add a tablespoon or so of cream.
Give it a quick whisk with a fork.
And now we're gonna brush it all over the surface.
Egg wash complete.
Let's pour that pie filling in.
And now we can pop it into the oven.
(chuckles) But first, we're gonna tent our pie crust.
Here's what tenting is.
It's aluminum foil again.
So all we're gonna do is get a little bit of foil,
fold it up, and now wrap it around your pie crust.
Oh, that was so much more than I needed.
And then you're just making a nice tinfoil barrier,
so the crust doesn't burn,
because this will be in the oven for 50 or so minutes.
Before I pop this into the oven, I'm using a baking sheet,
so I can handle it more easily
and not worry about the pie filling spilling out,
because it's a little bit uneven going into the oven.
You're gonna bake this for about 50 minutes.
It's a long time.
Make sure you don't over-bake the pie though,
because while it'll still taste fine,
the texture won't be as silky,
and you'll get all of these cracks.
So the center's not gonna be set.
It's not like a cake, where you stick a toothpick in,
comes out clean, done.
The center is gonna set kind of after baking almost,
so you can't eat the pie right out of the oven.
You're not gonna take the pie out of the oven
when it's done.
Turn the oven off.
It'll finish baking.
It'll cool down slowly.
And because its cooling down slowly,
you won't have as many or any cracks forming
in that custardy center.
That's a little tip for ya.
Okay, into the oven, 350, keep an eye on it
Out of the oven.
This cooled for a long, long, long time.
Now it's ready to handle, totally set.
And take a look at this pie crust.
It's so pretty.
(chuckles)
I love the color.
First of all, the spices darkened it up
a little bit to begin with.
But then that egg wash, so easy.
Such a nice step.
Look at this golden color.
I love it.
You can enjoy this right now, and it would be delicious,
or have a scoop of ice cream with it.
You could pile it high with meringue,
and give it a nice toasting with a torch,
for a stunning visual.
But my very most favorite way to enjoy this
is with whipped cream.
In case you haven't made it, let's whip up a batch.
One cup of cream into the bowl of a standing mixer.
And if you don't have a standing mixer,
you can make this by hand.
Now, we have two more ingredients, a splash of vanilla,
and a couple tablespoons of powdered sugar.
So we're gonna close the standing mixer, and get to work.
(standing mixer mixing)
Once it gets frothy, start adding in the sugar.
Okay.
Don't over-whip. (chuckles)
It'll turn into cheese.
Look at that beautiful consistency.
Delicious.
Oh, my gosh, it's my favorite thing to eat.
I could eat this whole bowl, feel sick out of my mind,
but have no regrets.
Let's plate this out.
[John Kanell] I'm not gonna lie,
I've made a ton of pies in my life.
And normally, I try and go really crazy
with the decoration scheme.
But this time, just a simple pinching
with your thumb situation, a nice egg wash,
and a beautiful bake is all it took.
Did I add a beautiful dollop of whipped cream on?
Yes, I did.
And will I be adding more?
I will be covering this piece completely (chuckles),
like a Baked Alaska in whipped cream,
and then eating the pie out from underneath.
That's how I roll, people.
Okay, if you have any questions,
leave them in the comments below.
Thank you so much for watching.
I hope you get to make this recipe.
Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Wait, whoa, whoa.
I didn't take a bite.
I didn't take a bite for you.
Okay, let's do it.
It's so good.
It's like a pumpkin custard, that's what it is.
So many spices, the orange, the rum,
and this pie crust is the business.
It is delicious.
Such a good texture.
Okay. (chuckles)
Thanks for watching.
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