Easy Vegan Pumpkin Pie to use your leftover pumpkin

I was determined to use up my pumpkins in cooking this year and not just throw them away so as well as this pumpkin and gnocchi gratin I made a pumpkin pie. I've made a pumpkin cheesecake (vegan) before, and this chocolate pumpkin cheesecake, but I've never made an actual pumpkin pie before.

I was spending the weekend with friends so a pie seemed like a nice thing to take; one friend is vegan so I needed to find a vegan recipe. I had a look online and ended up creating my own recipe based on this one from Yummy Mummy Kitchen, but using shop-bought shortcrust pastry, which is vegan, and using my fresh pumpkin rather than canned, coconut milk and cornflour to thicken, and brown sugar and golden syrup to sweeten it. The end result was a soft baked pie filling, almost the consistency of a baked cheesecake, which tasted delicious! It was very popular with my friends, vegan and non-vegan alike.

See below for the full recipe - I also want to mention here the vacuum seal food storage container from Ozeri that I used to transport and store my pie in. You get two large domed containers in the pack, and you simply close the valve at the top and push down to create a vaccum seal; when you want to open the container just open the valve. This keeps the food fresh and there's also a handy dial you turn to show which day you put the food in the container. They are fairly large to store but are a nice sturdy design and I like the fact that the lid is clear plastic so you can see what's inside, so this is also a nice way to serve food for instance when you are outside in the summer and want to keep the insects away!

 

It's currently available on the UK Amazon site but with fairly high shipping costs as it comes from the US, or you can find it on other Amazon sites which are cheaper to ship to the UK.

So here's how I made my pumpkin pie
Serves 10-12

Flesh from one large pumpkin, skin removed, chopped
500g shortcrust pastry block
The cream from the top of a 400ml tin of coconut milk plus some of the milk making up 200ml in total
150ml golden syrup
75g brown sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
3 tbsp. cornflour

Stew the chopped pumpkin in a pan of boiling water until softened then drain. Allow to cool then pulse in a food processor until you have a smooth puree.

Preheat oven to 180C. Roll out the pastry and use to line either a deep tart tin or a loose bottomed cake tin. Line with greaseproof paper and fill with baking beans and blind bake in a preheated oven for 15-20 minutes until the pastry is starting to turn golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cook while you make the filling.

In a large bowl, mix the pumpkin puree, coconut cream and milk, golden syrup, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and cornflour and beat until smooth.

Pour into the pie crust and return to the oven for 45 minutes. If the top of the pie starts to brown too much, cover with foil.

 

Remove from the oven and leave to cool then chill overnight in the fridge - this should make the filling set.

I'm sharing this with Baking Crumbs hosted by Jo's Kitchen Larder and CookBlogShare hosted by EasyPeasyFoodie.
 

Thanks to Ozeri for the food storage containers to review.

American MidWest Chocolate Cream Pie

My parents came to stay over the bank holiday weekend which was perfect timing for my husband and I to share our news in person. We had my husband's parents over for lunch and told them all at the same time; for that reason I didn't want to be cooking anything where I would have to spend a lot of time in the kitchen!

I made enchiladas for lunch which I was able to prepare that morning then just put in the oven, and my mum and I made dessert the night before.

My husband loves all things chocolate, and doesn't particularly like many other kinds of dessert, so I simply googled chocolate desserts, and came across a website of Mid-West American desserts. My mother in law is a frequent visitor to the US and loves the South, so I thought she might enjoy a dessert from the Mid-West - particularly this one!

It's a chocolate cream pie with a chocolate crust, a custardy chocolate filling and cream on top. The recipe is here on MidWestLiving.com.

I would say this was easy to make but really I have to say it looked easy to make, as my mum did most of it! She made the crust, rolled it out and put it in the tin; you part bake it lined with foil, then remove the foil and finish baking.

The filling takes a bit more effort - you have to be careful not to boil the milk, whisk together the other ingredients and mix it with some of the milk then the rest of the milk. You need to have your chocolate and butter ready to pour the hot mixture over the top and then time it while you stir.

 

After that it's pretty simple -pour the filling into the pie crust and refrigerate overnight. To serve, top with whipped cream and a sprinkle of chocolate - I was going to grate some chocolate but forgot in all the excitement of our baby news and ended up serving this as it was!

 

I'm sharing this with the We Should Cocoa chocolate baking blog challenge hosted by Choclette at Tin and Thyme and with CookBlogShare hosted by Everyday Healthy Recipes.

WeightWatchers Curried Fish Pie

Fish pie is a comforting family staple and is usually topped with mashed potato or puff pastry. The former is carb-heavy and the latter high in fat, so using filo pastry is a much lighter option.

I adapted a recipe in an old WeightWatchers magazine to make this, which tasted really good and made a nice change from the usual kind of fish pie. The WeightWatchers recipe had 6.5 syns per serving and I don't think my changes will have affected that.

To serve 2 you need:

175g white fish like cod or haddock, cut into cubes
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
75ml double cream (the WeightWatchers recipe calls for less than 55% fat double cream)
100g cooked and peeled prawns
1/2 tbsp. mild curry powder
zest of 1/2 a lime
4 x 15g sheets filo pastry
low fat cooking spray (I use Fry Light)

Preheat oven to 180C. Place the cubed fish and prawns in the bottom of an ovenproof dish and mix with the cream, curry powder and lime zest.

Cut each sheet of filo pastry in half to make 8 squares. Spray one side of the pastry with cooking spray and crumble up each piece of pastry and sit it on top of the pie dish until it is covered. Once you have used all the pastry, spray over them all with cooking spray.

Bake in the oven for 25 minutes until golden brown.

 

GBBO Roast Vegetable and Cashew Pie

I haven't actually done any proper baking for ages - I've been far too busy at work and with other things to do at home. Since I treated myself to the latest Great British Bake Off cookery book recently I realised I wasn't going to have a lot of chance to bake from it so decided to try one of the savoury recipes. I was intrigued by this roasted vegetable pie which used cashews as a form of protein, and decided to make it but change some of the vegetables. Instead of aubergine, courgette and red pepper, I used carrot, sweet potato and butternut squash.

The original recipe is here; I'm not going to type it all out but essentially you roast the vegetables with some garlic, oregano, salt, pepper and chilli flakes and allow them to cool.

Roll out some ready-made puff pastry and spread the veg across the pastry; at this point I added some red onion I had softened in a frying pan as well. Add the cashews and some sun-dried tomatoes.

 

Place another piece of pastry on top, press down the edges and crimp with a fork, and make a little air hole in the top. Brush with beaten egg and bake in the oven at 220C for about 25 minutes until golden brown.

This pie was delicious; the cashews soften a little and provide a nice texture contrast to the softer vegetables and I really like the way it looks! All this needs is some green veg or a green salad to serve for a hearty, filling vegetarian dinner.

This is something I think you could serve even as the main course for a vegetarian Christmas dinner, so I am sharing this with Charlotte's Lively Kitchen for the Food Calendar challenge.

Slimming World Lemon Meringue Pie

Lemon meringue pie is delicious but normally quite high in sugar. Anyone wanting a low-sugar version of a lemon meringue pie should take a look at this Slimming World recipe. It uses ready-made shortcrust pastry, so it isn’t entirely diet-friendly, but uses sweetener in place of sugar and doesn’t use any butter in the filling – it uses gelatine instead, which is much lower in calorie.

 

I already had some pastry in the freezer I needed to use up and my husband likes lemon meringue pie (he usually doesn’t like any of the desserts I want to make!) so when I came across this recipe in an old copy of Slimming World magazine it seemed like a great idea. Unfortunately I never get on with using my grill – it’s above eye-level and really hard to keep an eye on it – and I burned the top a bit!

 

Other than that it was fairly easy to make, especially if you are using ready-made pastry, though you do have to allow the filling to set overnight in the fridge. I couldn’t find my baking beans so the bottom did rise up a bit when I blind baked the pastry case but I didn’t mind.

 

 

To make the filling, you boil water with the sweetener until it turns syrupy, then remove from the heat and whisk in the lemon zest and juice and egg yolks. You then cook it in the microwave to set.

 

Stir in the gelatine, allow to dissolve and if you like you can sieve it to remove the zest though I left that in. Allow to cool and pour into the pastry case and leave in the fridge overnight to set.

 

To make the meringue topping, whisk egg whites and sweetener and spoon over the base. Place under a hot grill just for a minute or two until lightly browned on top – be careful not to burn it! I forgot to take any photos after I took it out of the tin, but wanted to share this recipe anyway - this tasted really good, not really any different to a full-sugar lemon meringue pie in my opinion.

 

Mini Chicken and Ham Picnic Pasties

Copyright Caroline Makes dot Net

These mini pasties are a good way to use up leftover cooked chicken, are easy to make (especially if you use shop-bought pastry) and are a nice alternative to sandwiches to take on a picnic or in your lunchbox.

I had some shortcrust pastry in the freezer, and these pie moulds from Lakeland I bought ages ago in the sale and had never gotten around to using.

You get three different size moulds in the box:

I cooked some chicken (you could also use ready cooked) and mixed it with some chopped ham from a tin, a handful of fresh parsley and a little crème fraiche (I would have added onion but my husband doesn't really like it). You can also add peas, mushroom or sweetcorn (cooked) if you like.

Rolling out the pastry, I decided to open out the pie mould and cut around it to get circles of the right size.

I placed the circle inside the mould, put filling in one half and squeezed it shut - this makes it so easy to get the lovely fluted edge you see on Cornish pasties.

I glazed them with milk and baked them in the oven at 180C for about 20-25 mins.

 

Let me know if you try different variants on the filling!

I'm sharing these with Cook Once, Eat Twice, hosted by Corina at Searching for Spice.

Low Carb Fish Pie with Cauliflower Mash

My low sugar diet also means low carb, as the starch and glucose in potatoes raises your blood sugar, so I've been looking for some good alternatives. I like cauliflower and wondered if I could make a fish pie and put mashed cauli on top, and found a few recipes online doing just that.

I followed this recipe for the cauliflower puree but I couldn't get mine smooth enough; I think if I had cooked the cauli for longer so it was softer that might have been better. I wouldn't have thought to add cheese and cream into it as well; it was quite nice, though to be honest I would have preferred mashed potato!

For the fish pie, I cooked a mixture of fish - I think I had white fish, salmon and smoked mackerel, and added some chopped leaks and made a white sauce.

I put it in a pie dish, spread the cauliflower mash over the top and popped it in the oven to brown.

Here you can see the fish and the topping. This felt like a very virtuous recipe and is good if you're cutting down on potatoes and miss having fish pie - but I have to say I would only eat it as "diet food", whereas a lot of the low cal/fat/sugar recipes I make are nice enough to eat whether you are on a diet or not.

Two-Pastry Fish Pie

I was given a pack of Jus-Rol shortcrust pastry and another of puff pastry to take home after attending an event recently and decided to use them - both of them - to make a pie. I've never used more than one type of pastry before but thought that the shortcrust would work well on the bottom, and the puff pastry on the top to make a lattice. So this is more of an idea than a recipe post, but it worked pretty well so I want to share.

Take an ovenproof dish - I used a small pyrex dish that was enough for two servings - and line the bottom with rolled out shortcrust pastry. Line with greaseproof paper (I forgot this part but it makes it much easier) then fill with ceramic baking beans, or uncooked rice, and bake blind in the oven for 15 mins.

Meanwhile I poached some smoked haddock in milk

I also had a packet of salmon flakes (cooked) which I bought as they were reduced in the supermarket, and I decided to throw these in as well.

When the base of the pastry is cooked, spoon in the fish. I used the poaching milk as a basis for a small quantity of a white sauce which I poured over the top. 

I've written before about my lattice pastry cutter; it's definitely easier to use with shop bought than homemade pastry! Roll out your pastry and roll the cutter over the top, then use your fingers to gently prise apart the lattice - you can see here I've done the top section but not the bottom section yet.

Place over the top of the pie and cut off any excess, then brush with milk or beaten egg.

Bake in the oven for 15-20 mins until the pastry on top is risen and golden brown. I think the lattice effect makes the pie look nice and it reduces the amount of pastry you need on top so it's even a little healthier!