brought to us by Kimber Herron
3 cups pumpkin puree. Homemade or canned.
3/4 cup honey
2 Tablespoons Molasses
1/4 teaspoon powdered cloves
3 teaspoons cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ginger + some grated ginger to taste
1 teaspoon salt
4 eggs slightly beaten
2 cups scalded* whole milk. No skim or low-fat milk, please!
Mix by hand in the order given. You do not need an electric mixer here.
Pour into crusted or buttered 9” – 10” pie pan, or fluted quiche pan.
Cook for 10 minutes in pre-heated 4500F oven.
Turn down oven to 3500F, cook for an additional 40 minutes, or until set.
Check doneness with toothpick, small bamboo skewer, or wire pie tester.
Cool until ready for refrigerator, or serve at room temperature.
*Scalding means cooking below the boiling point to produce tiny bubbles in the milk, somewhere around 1800F – 1850F, never at the boiling point, around 2120F. Scalding is mostly an artifact of the world before the advent of pasteurization. Scalding was implemented to destroy bacteria and certain enzymes, which has now been accomplished by pasteurization on a large scale since the 1930s and 1940s. Scalding can also prevent thickening of recipes during the cooking process. Today, it is best used as a means to avoid adding cold milk to a recipe going into the oven, or to aid in dissolving certain ingredients, such as sugar, in a given recipe. But scalding is still a bit of an anachronism, unless you have access to raw milk and have health concerns thereof.
Techniques to prevent bottom burning: use of a double boiler, or wetting the pan with a small amount of water prior to adding the milk.