Super Easy and Part Homemade Pumpkin Pie Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is most pumpkin pie filling made of? ›

Store-bought pumpkin pie mix (sometimes labeled "pumpkin pie filling") is a shortcut for making homemade pumpkin pie. It contains puréed pumpkin plus added spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves. It also contains sugar and other chemical additives.

To avoid a soggy crust, I blind bake it until it's thoroughly dry before adding the filling. To prevent those unsightly cracks in the filling, I've tweaked the traditional recipe: a bit of flour for stability, replacing some whole eggs with yolks for richness, and baking at a low temperature for even cooking.

They are the same product. Both canned pumpkin puree and pie filling are useful, shelf-stable ingredients that can help speed up your kitchen prep time. Just remember that puree is unsweetened, while pie filling contains sugar and spices. This will help you choose the right pumpkin product for your recipes.

Sugar Baby Pumpkin

Also known as Sugar Pie pumpkins, these thin-skinned squash are smaller (4-8 lbs.) and have a sweet, dense flesh with a fine-grained, smooth texture. The cooked flesh is a bit drier, which makes a great pie filling.

Libby's Easy Pumpkin Pie Mix

It's very creamy and very flavorful, very cinnamon forward and sweet, but I think once you mix it with the other ingredients and bake it, that added spice will serve you well.

Libby's 100% Pure Pumpkin

In this taste test, our Test Kitchen pros found that the biggest name in the pumpkin game does, in fact, make the best canned pumpkin on the market. Libby's 100% Pure Pumpkin is a favorite among our culinary crew.

Often, blind-baking solves this problem. If you're making a single crust custard-filled pie, like a pumpkin pie, bake the pie dough first before adding filling to allow some of the moisture in the crust to evaporate. You can also totally blind-bake fruit pies.

There are two times when blind baking is necessary: When we're making a custard pie or when the pie filling is unbaked. With a custard pie, like a pumpkin pie, the moisture in the filling can make the crust soggy before it has time to actually bake.

But don't dock it (docking is aerating the crust before baking by poking it with the tines of a fork). This will cause the custard to seep out into the bottom crust, defeating that whole "flaky" thing you were going for. The test kitchen's vessel of choice for pie is a 9" glass Pyrex pan.

Don't use pumpkin pie filling in place of pumpkin purée.

Every can of pumpkin pie filling has a different amount of sugar and spices and if you add it to a bread or muffin recipe you might get a very sweet and not-spiced-enough loaf. Try this instead: Buy pumpkin purée!

What happens if you use pumpkin pie filling instead of puree? ›

Pumpkin pie filling shouldn't be used in place of pumpkin puree since the finished dish will be too sweet. You can always set the can aside to make a quick pumpkin pie another day.

Organic pumpkin pie mix is made with the freshest pumpkin that's infused with sugar and spices for the perfect pie. Our pumpkin is certified organic, non-GMO verified, gluten-free, grown in the USA and available in BPA-Free lined packaging.

Start with the right variety of pumpkins, sugar pumpkins. Large pumpkins that we traditionally think of as jack-o-lanterns aren't ideal for pie as they are very stringy and have a lot of seeds. There really isn't very much “meat” to the larger pumpkins. Sugar pumpkins, also known as pie pumpkins, are sweeter.

Now if your pie tends to come out bland, you may not be letting your spices hit their full potential. Joy Wilson of Joy the Baker suggests, "To get the most festive flavor out of the spices in your pumpkin pie, bloom the spices with the pumpkin puree in a small saucepan before incorporating into the filling.

Look for a firm pumpkin that still has a 1 to 2 inch strong sturdy stem attached. A strong firm pumpkin will last longer than those with thin steams and soft spots. Choose pumpkins without cracks, small holes, or blemishes.

Pumpkin pie filling is a mixture of cooked, mashed winter squash that is blended with sweetener and spices. It's a convenient ingredient to use if you're planning to make a pumpkin pie and you're short on time.

Dickinson pumpkins, also known as Dickinson squash, are the pumpkins used to make the majority of canned pumpkin we eat today. But Dickinson pumpkins are tan pumpkins with uniform, smooth skin that are much larger than the average field pumpkin. They're also sometimes called squash, not pumpkins.

Although they both come in cans and the packaging looks almost identical, they can't be used interchangeably. Pumpkin puree doesn't have anything added to it, but pumpkin pie filling comes with pumpkin spice and sugar already mixed in.

The ingredients used to make sweet potato and pumpkin pies are almost identical, but it goes without saying that one is made with mashed sweet potato, while the other is made with mashed pumpkin (or more specifically, most canned pumpkin is a type of pumpkin called Dickinson squash).