Pumpkin pie is a hard sell to anyone who hasn’t grown up with it.
But if you’re ever going to win someone over, it’s with these dinky little pumpkin pies.
The filling comes courtesy of Dominique Ansel (which should help convince the French to try these), tweaked a little to my taste and using roasted fresh pumpkin. It is ludicrously easy to make (put all the ingredients, including a chunk of roast pumpkin, in a bowl and blitz with a stick blender) and yet so much better than any other I’ve tried. Think of it as silky pumpkin cream.
The pastry is a variation on a Mary Berry food processor sweet shortcrust. The amount here will give you at least enough for three dozen mini muffin tin-sized tarts. Keep the rest in the fridge for a week or so or freeze it. If you prefer an unsweetened shortcrust pastry, let me refer you to my failsafe mince pie pastry recipe here.
I made my mini pumpkin pies in a mini muffin tin but use whatever you have and you won’t be disappointed!
You can watch a video of the Dominique Ansel team making their pumpkin pie by clicking on this link.
Ingredients
Sweet shortcrust pastry
- 225g plain flour
- 25g icing sugar
- 150g slightly salted butter
- 1 large egg, beaten
Silky pumpkin cream
- 60g pumpkin puree
- 60g cream
- 1 large egg yolk
- 20g caster sugar
- 1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
- pinch nutmeg
Method
Sweet shortcrust pastry
Set up your food processor with the bowl and blade attachment. Pour in the flour and icing sugar and whizz to mix them.
Add the butter, cut into chunks and whizz again, until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs.
Finally, with the motor running, add the whisked egg. Stop the machine as soon as the dough clumps together. If this hasn’t happened 20 seconds after adding the egg, trickle 1-2 tbsp of cold water down the funnel, just until it does come together.
Tip the pastry out of the food processor and squash together into a fat disc. Wrap it up well and pop it in the fridge to chill for at least 30 minutes, or up to a week.
When you are ready to start making the pumpkin pies, cut about a third of the pastry dough off and roll into a ball.
Switch your oven on to 180°C.
Flour your work surface, rolling pin and the dough and roll it out to about half a centimetre thick.
Use a pastry cutter to cut out circles of pastry and pop them into the indents in your baking tin.
Lay a small piece of baking paper on top of each one and add baking beans, rice or dried beans to stop the pastry bubbling up when you bake it.
Bake the pastry shells for 8 minutes, then remove the beans or rice and baking papers and put them back in for 2 minutes to dry out underneath.
SILKY PUMPKIN Cream
Turn your oven down to 160°C.
Add all the custard ingredients to a bowl and use a stick blender to create a smooth batter.
Carefully pour batter into each of the pastry shells, filling them as close to the top as you dare.
Return the baking tin to the oven for 10-15 minutes, or until the filling has puffed up and feels set when you lightly touch the top.
(If you see the filling start to crack, they have definitely had enough time baking – whip them out of the oven)
Leave the pies to cool before tucking in!