This week, we finally got to make the pumpkin pie that Abby wanted to make a few weekends ago.  But the last time I had made pumpkin pie, it wasn’t very tasty and I wasn’t impressed.  Mind you, that was also when I had bought some gluten-free graham crackers to make into a crust, and they burnt in the oven, so it wasn’t a great product even without the filling.  I managed to get the recipe from a colleague, who I won the ‘no refined-sugar’ challenge against back in January – he gave me a piece of his pumpkin pie as my winnings and, while the crust wasn’t that great, the filling was really nice. So we decided to give it a go.

And, me being me, decided to change it up a bit anyway.  Instead of my never-fail ugly crust recipe (see here), I thought I could use some granola and crush that up fine with some dairy-free shortening.  You know when you get to the bottom of a granola container and it’s just crumbs, that doesn’t taste that good?  Well, we were there with some of my granola that I’d made (based on my 5P’s granola, see here for recipe) and I didn’t feel like forcing myself to eat this granola for the rest of the week.  So we got out the trusty Ninja, and ‘wazzed’ it into crumbs, melted some shortening and then mixed it all together.  Abby and I had a great time pushing the mixture into the pie tin with our hands, a spoon, a cup, anything we could think of since I had read that this had to be really compacted.

And then we made the filling – pumpkin puree, almond milk, maple syrup, raw sugar (see, no refined sugar in this!), corn starch, and of course pumpkin pie spice.  And the result:

Looks pretty good, doesn’t it?  We couldn’t wait for it to cool completely, so we all had a piece while it was still relatively luke-warm.  Grant’s comment was that he tasted too much pumpkin in it (sigh!), Abby said it rocked.  I’m going with Abby’s reaction!  Anyway, I thought it tasted really good by itself but the rest of the family had some ice cream with it as well.

And then Abby and I got to go clothes shopping together – ah, the life of a teenager!  We had a good time and profitable too with no arguments and three items of clothing purchased all within about 10 mins of entering the store.  That’s my type of shopping!

Anyway, back to the cooking bit – if you’d like me to post the recipe for this no refined-sugar, gluten and dairy-free pumpkin pie, please let me know in the comments below … or I may just have to keep the secret all to myself!

Until next time, enjoy cooking at home … with kids!

Sarah