Pumpkin Pie for Thanksgiving 2025: Burnt but Beautiful
I was delighted to finally be hosting Thanksgiving at our house, instead of having to schlepp to Grandpa's house. My Sis and BIL were visiting, and I heard he was hoping for a traditional Pumpkin Pie. I decided to stick to my tried and true recipe from Sally's Bake Blog.
I made the pie dough on the Tuesday, using this recipe from Sally's Baking for an all-butter crust. I had to make two crusts, actually, because I made a mistake while mentally halving the recipe and used 1/4 cup more flour than I needed. I quickly saw that crust wasn't ever going to come together! I made a second crust and let it sit in the fridge overnight.
The next day, on Wednesday, the crew drove over to a nearby farm to pick up a locally raised turkey breast for our meal. There were only 5 of us, so we didn't want to deal with a whole turkey. Meanwhile, I made the pie. Rolling out the crust and making the filling were the easy parts. But the baking!
First of all, I'm just getting to know the oven in this new induction stove. It's a lovely blue LG oven that seems to be properly calibrated but also seems to have some pretty radical hot spots. And I am nervous baking custards. I spent some time looking at my notes from previous pies, and at other recipes, and decided to approach the crust differently. So, instead of baking for 10 minutes with pie weights and 7 minutes without, at 375F, I prebaked the crust at 425 for 20 minutes with the pie weights. Quickly the edges looked a little too golden. I removed the beans, lowered the oven temperature to 400F, and baked the crust for another 7 minutes. Then I put in the filling and returned the pie to the oven.
Sally's recipe calls for 375F, but Preppy Kitchen and King Arthur call for 400. After 20 minutes I went to cover the edges of the crust with foil and they were burned.
I noticed the edge of the pie already looked puffy and set. But with such a short bake time - the recipe calls for 55-60 minutes! - I left the pie in oven. I checked again 10 minutes later, after 30 minutes of baking the filling. I noticed cracks in filling. I checked the temperature in the center of the pie and it was above 170F so I made the executive decision to take the pie out of the oven, even though it had baked for only half the time it was supposed to. By now the filling was already cracked and the edges of the crust were burned.
I was surprised because even though I baked the pie at a higher temperature than Sally's recipe calls for, the King Arthur and the Preppy Kitchen recipes have basically identical ingredients and say to bake the pie at 400F. However, the only reason custard pies get cracks, and crusts burn, is because the oven is too hot. So next time, in this oven, I'll stick to 375F! Because with pumpkin pie, there is always a next time.
On Thanksgiving day, after watching the Macy's Parade, I took the pie out a couple of hours before we ate to let it come to room temperature. I made some whipped cream and, using a Wilton 1M tip, piped two rings of whipped cream around the eges of the pie to cover up the cracks, and a swirl in the center to cover up the hole where I used the oven thermometer. I decorated the whipped cream, with small pie-crust hearts I'd cut out from leftover pie crust and baked. This really improved the presentation. Now it looked like a pretty rustic pie, even with the burned edges!
I was very pleased to taste the pie and find that it was absolutely delicious. The crust on the bottom was nice and crispy and the little cut-out hearts made it even better!
On this Thanksgiving we were 5 people at the table and we had such a fun meal. In spite of it being more work to host, and have guests for a week, I enjoyed this holiday so much more than if I'd had to go to someone else's house - again.
*Another idea for next time is try Everyday Pie's suggestion regarding par baking the crust at 400 then lowering to 350 for the filling.
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