This weekend, I finally got around to making my first ever pumpkin pie, courtesy of the Peaceable Imperatrix, who very kindly sent me two tins of pumpkin by post. Excellent! Reader, it was most surprising. I just hadn’t got a good feeling about the whole idea of pie + pumpkin. Having spent years hacking the insides out of them for the sole purpose of making pretty lantern accessories for Small Cat (the ideal witches’ cat – small, black, savage), I hadn’t really considered them in a sweet context. Savoury yes, sweet decidedly no. Yet… I confess it: I was wrong. Wronger than a wrong thing in Wrong Town. Naturally, I couldn’t resist buggering about with the recipe, not least because I am back on the avoidance diet bandwagon, and wanted to avoid using condensed milk, and somehow I discovered that I’d basically made a posset à la manière de Kay Harker but with the strategic addition of pumpkin. Oh, and pastry. Anyway. You get the idea. And yes, I am aware that the picture makes it look marginally more attractive than a minced dog-collar sandwich, but take it from me, in this case, appearances are being deceptive.

Posset Pumpkin Pie

Get grubby paws on…

For the filling:

1 tin of pumpkin from the US of A (actually, it could come from wherever you like, really, but I’ve not seen it here in the UK in this format. Sure it’d work with fresh pumpkin too, of course.)

1 large tsp dried ginger

2 large tsps cinnamon

2 large tsps mixed spice

Good sprinkle of nutmeg

3/4 mug of sugar

1 mug of soya milk

2 tbsps of treacle

2 tbsps of golden syrup

3 eggs, beaten

For the pastry:

6 oz wholemeal flour

3 oz butter

Fistful of ground almonds

1 egg yolk

Slug of water, sufficient to get everything to stick together

Then…

Heat the oven up to about 200°c. Meanwhile, grease a tin (mine’s about eight inches across, and is square). Make up the pastry by rubbing the butter into the flour, then whacking in the almonds, the egg yolk, and finally enduring the misery which is the inevitably sticky result of adding the water. Don’t make it quite as dry as you would for white pastry, because the wholemeal flour continues to absorb the water for quite a wee while. When you’re happy with the results, shove it in the tin, and basically press it in until it’s reasonably thin and shapely-looking. Bake it blind for about ten minutes, then whip it out and put it to one side (rather worryingly, I find I can’t type that sort of thing without assuming a 1930s RP accent; this is a tad worrying but hey, who’s counting? Er…).

Then, totter off across the kitchen and start the pumpkinness. Beat the eggs, and then stick the pumpkin in (being sure to allow it to come out of the tin slowly, as this gives quite the best offensive gurgle it’s possible to achieve). Podge the pumpkin about, and add the sugar, the spices, and the soya milk. When it’s stirrable, sling the treacle and the golden syrup in, and give it all a good poke about. My treacle didn’t completely stir in, but this led to nice streaks of deliciousness in the finished article. When the stirring is making you consider ending it all, pour the mixture into the part-baked pastry case, and whack the lot in the oven for about twenty minutes on 200°c, before turning it down to about 170°c. Leave in for longer than you’d think human endurance could stand, given the gorgeous smell which will by now have replaced that slightly earthy pumpkin aroma, and indeed you’ll probably find that about forty minutes are necessary to get the knife to come out clean when you stick it in to check done-ness.

The instructions on the tin that Imperatrix sent said something half-witted about leaving it for two hours after this. Clearly, not an option. Instead, we opted to follow Plan B: scarf straight from tin (well, there but for the grace of a new bowl from pottery go we) while very hot and marvel at non-horridness of it all.