Cook's Illustrated Pumpkin Pie

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I was gluttonous and not unhappy about it in the least. I also got a lot of rest and spent time with my "brother" Toby, the rat terrier mix, who is clearly now top dog in our family. His first Thanksgiving with my family and he's plated and served first; fed twice! Unbelievable what happens during the empty nest phase -- the spoiling is much worse than I imagined.

Anyway, I'm in charge of making pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving and I'm happy to do so. I LOVE LOVE LOVE pumpkin pie. It's an understatement. I could eat it all year long and not lose interest. I have made pumpkin pie for the last five years since my family. How come my sister is the only one that comes away with not bringing anything?!!

I decided to try the Cook's Illustrated Pumpkin Pie as I read it was the be all, end all of pumpkin pies. It has wonderful ingredients like heavy cream, whole milk, eggs and egg yolks, cinnamon and fresh ginger all things that come right to my heart. So I made it and as you can see, it is really gorgeous, isn't? But I didn't like it as much as the recipe off the Libby's can. To be fair, the texture of this pie is silky smooth because you have to strain the pumpkin and the secret ingredient but you can't taste the spices that make pumpkin pie pumpkin pie, you know?

It was more pumpkin-y than I expected. I couldn't taste any cinnamon or ginger or any of the other spices that usually shine through. It was good but not the be all of pies AND it took way more time than the Libby recipe. I'm going back to the version I love best which I think I will make again at Christmas.

Enjoy!

I'm not going to re write the recipe as a quick google search will promptly bring up oodles and oodles of recipes and pictures. Can you tell I have blogger burnout?