Guido with his pumpkin pie. Photo Guido Camps In the WUR community, you come across all the flavours of the world. Guido Camps (39), a researcher in Human Nutrition and OnePlanet, shares a recipe for an autumnal pumpkin pie.
‘In America, they have the incomprehensible habit of baking a pie crust first, and then filling it with apple, cherries or sweet potato and putting it back in the oven. The result is a sweet twice-baked pie that you can hardly get a knife through. In the autumn, you can’t go anywhere in the US without coming across products with pumpkin spice, from a latte to body lotion. This spice mix was originally used for pumpkin pie, a quintessential autumnal dessert. It’s good to make it once, if only to go back to baking good old Dutch apple pie afterwards.’
‘I give my students the opportunity to request pie recipes during the course. I create secret Brightspace modules for them. Surprisingly, American-style pies are always very popular there.’
Ingredients
Crust:
- 115g butter
- 150g flour
- pinch of salt
- teaspoon of sugar
- a few tablespoons of cold water
Filling:
- a pumpkin
- a tin of condensed milk
- 1 egg
- 3 heaped tablespoons of brown sugar
- koek en speculaaskruiden, a Dutch spice mix
- vanilla essence
- salt
Use a small pie dish for this recipe.
Preparation
Crust:
- Rub the flour, butter, sugar and salt together to make a breadcrumb texture (or use a food processor). Slowly add water to form a smooth ball. Wrap the dough in foil and let it rest in the fridge for 1 hour.
- Roll out the dough, line the pie dish with it and pinch it around the edge. Let it rest in the fridge again while you preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Bake the dough in 2 steps: first blind (with baking beans to weigh it down), and then empty, both times for about 10 minutes, until both edge and base look dry.
Filling:
- Cut the pumpkin into pieces and steam it in a sealed container in the microwave for about 6 minutes until tender. Let it cool, skin and mash it.
- Mix the pumpkin puree with the egg and the condensed milk, brown sugar, salt, vanilla and spices to taste. Stir well.
Now fill the pre-baked crust with the pumpkin filling and return the pie to the oven. If the edge of the crust starts to burn, cover it with aluminium foil. Bake the pie for about 35 minutes until it is firm in the middle.
