Riittalicious: Bake My Day / Pumpkin Pie

My dear Americans! Since Thanksgiving is drawing nearer, please don't forget to be thankful for pumpkin pie. That delicious treat that is often over looked among other pies during the holidays.

Once you move away from the USA, you will notice that rest of the world has no clue about pumpkin pie.

It is very simple pie to make but getting the ingredients in Finland is not so easy. Kuopio doesn't have canned pumpkin at all! For some odd reason Finns like to eat their pumpkins pickled, and even that is not very popular. There is a speciality shop called Behnford's in Helsinki and they sell products from the USA and England. Anytime I happen to be in Helsinki, I visit their shop to stock up on hard to find ingredients. Thank goodness they have an online store as well because I can order canned pumpkin and other US treats delivered right to our door steps. But dang! One can costs 4,90 euros. That is $6.75!! My wish for Santa this year, is to bring me many cans of pumpkin (*wink*).

Here's a recipe for the Libby's famous pumpkin pie just in case you happen to have canned pumpkin on your cupboards.

This is what you need for the pie:
-3/4 cup sugar (1 3/4 dl)
-½ tsp salt
-1 tsp ground cinnamon
-½ tsp ground ginger
-1/4 tsp ground gloves
-2 large eggs
-1 can 100% pure pumpkin (1 can = 15oz = about 4,5dl)
-1 can evaporated milk (1 can = 12 fl.oz = about 3 dl)
-1 pie shell, 9 inch diameter ( I used Sunnuntai piirakkataikina, which is a Finnish pie crust, you just have to roll it out yourself)

If you don't have a ready pie shell, thaw out the pie crust dough. Then roll it out and put on a 9 inch (23cm) pie pan.
Mix sugar, salt, cinnamon, ginger and gloves in a small bowl. Beat eggs in large bowl. Stir pumpkin and sugar-spice mixture. Gradually stir in evaporated milk. Pour into pie shell.
Bake in preheated 425F/225C oven for 15 minutes. reduce temperature to 350F/175C and bake 40-50 minutes or until knife inserted near center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack for 2 hours. Serve immediately or refrigerate. Serve with whipped cream.
Note! Don't freeze pumpkin pies because the crust will separate from the filling when the pie freezes.

As you can see, I didn't have evaporated milk (because that is sometimes hard to find in Finland) and I ended up using condensed milk. I reduced the amount of sugar because condensed milk is sweeter than

evaporated milk.

Close up on the canned pumpkin for all the people who don't know how it looks like. Instead of using all the spices the recipe calls for, I used pumpkin spice mix that I had gotten from the USA. It has the same spices than on the recipe.