This recipe is inspired by the pumpkin pie my grandmother used to make. It was simply a leavened dough (“yeast raised dough”) with a pumpkin filling on top. This leavened dough is quite typical from the North and East of France.
I added a few personal touches such as spices & almonds. I like to make it with a squash called Sucrine du Berry instead of pumpkin.
Grandma’s pumpkin pie
Ingredients
Four the dough
- 250 g flour
- 100 g softened butter if not, melted
- 2 eggs
- 14 g fresh solid baking powder
- ¼ a glass of tepid milk
- ½ tsp salt
- 2 tbsp sugar
For the filling
- 700 g cooked squash I use a type that is known for being very suitable for dessert recipes
- 15 cl thick sour cream
- 100 g cane sugar
- 1 egg
- 2 tbsp almond powder
- 1 tbsp flour
- 1 tsp powdered cinnamon
- 1 tsp powdered vanilla
- ¼ tsp powdered ginger
- ¼ tsp powdered nutmeg
- few orange zests optional
- a handful of slivered almonds optional
Instructions
Leavened dough preparation
- 4 hours before making the pie, or the day before, prepare the leavened dough.
- Mix the yeast with the tepid milk and sugar. Mix to dissolve the yeast and let it rest for 15 minutes.
- In a large bowl, pour the flour, make a hole, and add the salt, eggs, yeast, and softened (and diced) or melted butter in that order.
- Mix the ingredients well, and beat by hand or with a mixer with the kneading hooks for about 10 minutes. The dough should become elastic and detach from the hand. Sprinkle the bowl with flour if necessary.
- Once the dough is well kneaded, put the dough in a floured bowl, covered with a cloth, in a fairly warm room and let it rest. The dough should double in volume (count between 2 and 4 hours depending on the temperature – I let it rise for 4 hours).
- If you make your dough the day before: you can put at in the bottom of the refrigerator, but you should take it out early enough the next day (about 2 hours) to warm it up (put it on a radiator for example).
Preparation of the pumpkin filling
- If the squash is not already cooked, peel it and steam it until it melts. Then mash the cooked squash with a fork to obtain a purée.
- In a bowl, beat the egg with the sugar until the mixture is frothy.
- Add the spices: cinnamon, vanilla, nutmeg and ginger, and the zest if you put some.
- Pour the mixture over the squash puree. Mix well to homogenize the stuffing.
- Stir in almond powder and flour and mix.
- Add the fresh cream and mix again. You should obtain a fairly liquid but still thick texture.
- In a large pie dish (I took a 30 cm diameter dish), place the dough in the center of the dish, and roll it down with your fists to stretch it towards the edges. The dough doesn’t have to rise all the way up to the edges depending on the size of the dish.
- Pour the stuffing over the dough. You can sprinkle with slivered almonds.
- Bake at 195 °C for 35 minutes, and leave 5 more minutes once the oven is turned off (check the baking time according to your oven…).
- Take the tart out and place it on a wire rack to let it cool down.
- Serve warm or cold. For an even more gourmet touch, serve with a scoop of vanilla or caramel ice cream or whipped cream.
Notes
For a vegan version: replace the butter in the dough with a vegetable oil (neutral like olive oil or marked like coconut oil), the milk with 150 g of vegetable milk, and replace the fresh cream in the filling with a liquid almond or rice cream.
Other ideas
You can of course test this recipe with different types of squash, pumpkin or pumpkin … Add walnuts…
Finally for other pumpkin pie-type dessert recipes, you can replace the leavened dough by a shortbread dough, or try a cheesecake version with crushed speculoos for the cookie, and add “cream cheese” in the filling. But it won’t be at all the same dessert without the leavened dough 🙂