If I had a cooking bucket list, I will be marking these two items off today:

make pie crust - DONE!
make pumpkin pie - DONE!

Yep, people THIS is a milestone for me. Because

I have never made pie crust from scratch (seriously why go thru all the trouble when you can buy it made at the supermarket?)
Pumpkin - hate it.
I stayed far, far away from these baking items most of my life

And I was happy.

Then I meet Tom.

And Tom loves me.

And I love him back.

And being in a loving relationship you do things for each other that you don’t like to do.

Like making pie crust from scratch and then filling it with pumpkin.

Yes, I love him A LOT.

Just like I love my food processor, because using that for less than 5 minutes gave me pie crust, that looked and felt like the real stuff, the real GOOD stuff.

I will never be afraid of pie crust again.

I will never buy pre-made supermarket pie crust again.

The pumpkin filling?

My love for Tom is strong, but not enough to take me go to the other side and like pumpkin.

Sorry, babe.

But, did you see my pretty pie crust?

This filling is made with caramel, the way that I have always made caramel, sugar to hot pan, see sugar melt in hot pan. Watch like a hank, as soon as it turns blond, take away from heat.

And…voila! Hot yummy caramel in the house.

I did do an extra step in order to avoid having to yell at the caramel. And warmed up my cream in the microwave in order for it to be warm when it hit the HOT caramel and have a hot mess in my hands.

It still bubbled up like crazy, but it did not form hard, candy pieces. And trust me you do not want to have hard caramel inside the caramel.

The rest was pretty easy, but then when does dorie give us difficult instructions - ah, like never. It was done an in to the oven and then I got to sit back and wait for my house to start smelling like fall.

It did, at the 45 minute mark. But, it needed a bit more baking time and at the 60 minutes it came out, to rest up on rack and cool its pretty self out.

Verdicts:

Tom liked it, I think he was just happy he was not tasting cake but PIE! an honest to goodness pie, with crust and filling. His take was that he could taste the caramel and while it was not the usual pumpkin pie he was accustom, it was not bad and that he would make sure to finish it.

I did not even go near it. Ok, I did take a tiny bitty piece of crust and it was perfect! Flaky, and the perfect sweet/salty taste. So I know I did good on that front, which in my book was the hardest part of the whole thing.

We can thank Janell of Mortensen Family Memoirs for this pick and if you are itching to place this in your Thanksgiving table you can also find the recipe at her blog.

And don’t forget to visit TWD and check out what others are saying about pie.

Now that I think about it, I should make a cooking bucket list.