Marzipan and Pumpkin Pie Part 3 by KimB

For holiday dinners I do try to keep it simple. This year I thought I had it dead simple. Silly me.

I'd done all my shopping early, I knew exactly what I was fixing, what I could fix ahead of time, I figured everything out … except, the pumpkin pie part. The one thing I fail at year after year. It's amazing how many ways I can wreck pumpkin pie, I do seem to be able to come up with new variations on awful each season.

This year I thought I would have Advantage Kim by buying a can of premixed organic pumpkin pie filling. It had all the spices, organic sugars and was supposed to be “pour and bake”. I suppose it might actually work that way for someone else, but as I was the one with the can opener something odd was surely about to happen.

No fear. It did.

I had decided to eliminate the pie crust problem with the pie and make a pumpkin custard instead. By removing 50% of the problem making pumpkin pie, which is the crust, I figured I'd be 50% head of the curve.

You do know, statistics lie....

I had downloaded a very simple pumpkin custard recipe from the Internet. Not too many lines. Not too many directions. The picture looked good too. I read the first few ingredients about pumpkin puree, spices and sugar and went Directly To Go. I opened the can of pumpkin pie filling and into a bowl it went. SUCCESS! Oh... wait, 2 eggs... OK, in went the eggs. WOOTS! I was on a roll. The next line was the killer: Evaporated Milk. And you know how that's spelled? Oh @$%#.

I headed for the PC and the Internet again looking up how to make evaporated milk. Lots of recipes, I found one I could do. Evaporated milk is just regular milk cooked down to less volume. I had purchase a small quart of milk as a “just in case” item and this certainly qualified. I duly measured out 2 cups of milk into a saucepan and put it on the stove to reduce.

I waited for it to reduce, stirring, not stirring, removing surface scum. I waited and waited and waited. Dinner time came and went, and I was still waiting and Allen was waiting too. There's not much you can do with milk on the stove, you just have to “watch and wait”. Allen went off to read, nap, play with the cat, eat snacks and wait for dinner while I played with the milk on the stove and waited for it to reduce.

After what seemed like hours, the milk reduced sufficiently and I mixed it into the bowl with the pumpkin pie filling and eggs. It formed a very uninteresting pumpkin colored slurry. I began to realize that yet another pumpkin pie disaster was in serious danger happening. In short, I began to panic. I had to figure out what I could do to avoid it.

I had the custard cups all ready to go. I grabbed the maple syrup from the fridge and poured a nice splotch into the bottom of each cup. I figured it couldn't hurt. Next, I needed something to cover the top of the pumpkin slurry in each cup. Whatever was going to come out of the oven after baking would surely need to be hidden.

It didn't take me long to figure I could kill two disasters at once. I got those chips of marzipan-rock out and put them on top of the pumpkin slurry. I grabbed some of those toasted almonds too and decorated some more with them. Into the oven they went.

While they were baking, I was able to get the rest of the dinner together and we had the traditional everything: turkey, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce. A bit later than expected but tasty and filling. We both avoided talking about the custard in the oven.

When the hour was up and I got them out of the oven, they didn't look too bad. In fact they looked pretty good.

Allen said “I'm not trying it....”. Wise man.

After they cooled I wrapped them and put them in the fridge until I got the courage to taste one. Carefully, I spooned up a glob and standing over the sink, just in case, I took a taste.

Hmmm.... Hmmm... Yummmm!!!

I was so excited it tasted good, I forced Allen into trying it. He was surprised to say the least! One bite, two bites, the spoon was moving faster and faster; then he said, “This is the BEST pumpkin pie you've ever made!”

I'm so pumped! I wonder what kind of disaster I can come up with next season?!!!

[Editor's note: This story is Part 3 of 3 and was written by KimB.]

Pumpkin Custard with Marzipan Rock Topping