Making pumpkin pie with a 10 year old …… tasty treat or Halloween horror?

Like so many mothers of 10-year-old boys, my son is somewhat obsessed with watching videos on Youtube and the resulting slow creep of American sayings that are entering the house drives me to distraction. Sweets are now candy, he talks about restrooms and elevators and I have even heard him greet a friend with ‘Whassup bro?’

With the end of October approaching the videos are now all Halloween themed and so it seemed inevitable that he would want to do something Halloween-based this half term. Trick or treating has become rather ubiquitous but thankfully another mum is taking him and her son off to do that, so I don’t have to follow him round whilst he begs for sweets in the local neighbourhood. Having avoided my least favourite activity, I felt I couldn’t say no when he asked if we could make pumpkin pie together. In fact, it sounded lovely and wholesome and a joyous mother/son bonding opportunity.

A bit of research found a variety of recipes but we settled on a BBC Good Food recipe that was pretty straightforward. It involved shop-bought pastry (excellent) but actual pumpkins rather than the tinned variety.

The recipe asked for 750g of ‘pumpkin’ with no indication of size or variety which wasn’t particularly helpful. Luckily, I had read that you can’t use the large carving pumpkins as they are too watery and so I found myself in Lidl eying up the various small pumpkin options trying to guess how much they might weigh, whether the green ones are tastier than orange, and if big is bad then would smaller be better? I eventually opted for one green and one orange smallish pumpkin (and an extra one just in case we needed it… we didn’t).

Once home we got started on the task of peeling, deseeding and chopping up the pumpkins. My son is pretty good at safely using sharp knives but we had to compromise on him just scooping out seeds and chopping up the pieces. I did cutting open and the peeling (well cutting off the skin with a knife) as it turns out pumpkins are rock-hard and pretty tricky to cut open.

The next tricky part was the pastry but we managed to get it rolled out (mostly) evenly and I let him do his own thing with the leftover bits to make a smaller tart. There was only a small amount of flour covering the floor, me, the dog etc so I’ll take that as a win.

The recipe called for the (boiled) pumpkin to be pureed but my son was keen to use the masher and since it was lovely and soft by the point, mashing was really easy and he had a great time shouting ‘I’m going to crush you!’ each time he mashed.

The rest of the recipe was very straightforward and he was able to do it all by himself with just a bit of supervision. The resulting pie looked the part and the only issue was getting him to wait for it to cool down before he could try it.

Once it was chilled, the recipe called for a dusting of icing sugar and cinnamon unfortunately our pie was definitely on the damp side and so the icing sugar dissolved on contact but at least it was fun to do. The resulting pie looked a bit patchy (big sister was kind enough to point this out).

So what did the family think?

Results:
Ease of recipe – perfect for a 10-year-old (with some help with the cutting) and lots of different steps to get involved in. 9/10
Cost – no expensive ingredients and even cheaper if you make your own pastry 8/10
Presentation – the icing sugar was a bust but otherwise it looked the part and 10-year-boy was delighted with the results 8/10
Flavour – my son wolfed it down (on principle) but the rest of the family turned up their noses. There is something deeply weird about serving what we would normally consider a vegetable as a sweet pie. Having said that, the texture was nice and covered in enough cream and custard it was perfectly edible. 4/10

OVERALL
Did we have a great time and enjoy ourselves making it? Yes
Would we do it again? No

PUMPKIN PIE
(taken from BBC Good Food Magazine website )
Ingredients
750g/1lb 10oz pumpkin, peeled, deseeded and cut into chunks
350g sweet shortcrust pastry
plain flour, for dusting
140g caster sugar
salt
fresh nutmeg, grated
1tsp cinnamon
2 eggs, beaten
25g butter, melted
175ml milk
1tbsp icing sugar

Method

STEP 1
Place the pumpkin in a large saucepan, cover with water and bring to the boil. Cover with a lid and simmer for 15 mins or until tender. Drain pumpkin; let cool.

STEP 2
Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface and use it to line a 22cm loose-bottomed tart tin. Chill for 15 mins. Line the pastry with baking parchment and baking beans, then bake for 15 mins. Remove the beans and paper, and cook for a further 10 mins until the base is pale golden and biscuity. Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly.

STEP 3
Increase oven to 220C/200C fan/gas 7. Push the cooled pumpkin through a sieve into a large bowl or blend to a puree in a food processor. In a separate bowl, combine the sugar, salt, nutmeg and half the cinnamon. Mix in the beaten eggs, melted butter and milk, then add to the pumpkin purée and stir to combine. Pour into the tart shell and cook for 10 mins, then reduce the temperature to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Continue to bake for 35-40 mins until the filling has just set.

STEP 4
Leave to cool, then remove the pie from the tin. Mix the remaining cinnamon with the icing sugar and dust over the pie. Serve chilled.

Let us know if you try this recipe or if you have any Halloween recipes to share! We would love to hear from you.

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