Lifespan of a Chennette

Lilandra has created a maelstrom of baking madness at home in Trinidad. It’s hard not to get caught up in it. She’s been baking so much that if anyone touches flour in the kitchen she tries to claim it’s their baking so she can lighten her resume, as it were. Even if she was involved, dare I say instrumental to the process. That’s how it is with this pumpkin pie. She says it was my baking endeavour. But who made the pastry? and procured the recipe? She just wanted me to clean up…

I admit that it was possibly my fault that Mom and I came home with a larger than needed pumpkin. But while we were at the Chaguanas market (buying the chennet), we were waiting on the cocoa lady and in front of us were all these huge chunks of beautiful pumpkin. So I mentioned this to Mom, and before you knew it, a dash into the market to buy 6 cocoa balls ended up with my carrying out a 10 lb bag of stuff! But back to the pumpkin. I do not recall who brought up the idea of pie when we brought the pumpkin home. It’s been a couple weeks. But I did volunteer to make the pumpkin puree for addition to a recipe. Lilandra brought forth Rose Levy Berenbaum’s Great Pumpkin Pie Recipe… and started the process for the crust immediately.  Chilling cubes of butter, and flour and whatnot, from the day before. (more photos below)

And then a day later, I took a third of the pumpkin and cooked it. The recipe called for 3 cups of puree…I looked in the pot and determined, wow, that looks about right. WRONG. I have no idea how much it was, but it clearly was TOO much. We were making TWO pies. TWO. Lilandra made pastry for two pies, with some bits to top the finished product. By the time we added the spices, the dairy and made our pumpkin pie custard, and started filling dishes, we ended up with 3 whole pies and about 3 little ramekins of crustless pies. Trinis out there may be interested to hear that we used a bag of Rough Tops to make a crumbly crust for the unexpected third pie.

Whew. No wonder neither of us wanted to clean up. Although the real mystery is, how did I end up with 90 photos of pie making?? Enthusiasm with the tripod I suppose. Don’t worry, I’m not going to show you all 90 here. I only uploaded about 8 to Flickr anyway. Mass shots don’t mean they’re all great

The Pastry, which Lilandra had tried for her Lemon Meringue pie earlier, was really great. Rich, buttery, flaky. Great tasting and not soggy at all. The pie recipe also calls for some crumbs to be placed on the pastry shell before adding the filling, to assist in the crispiness of the bottom layer. The process of making this pastry is worth it I think, IF you need to have a great pastry for a pie. I am thinking a juicy fruity pie with this flaky buttery crustiness would be yummy. Truth is, the crustless pumpkin pie with just the little decorative bits of pastry ontop were great. Crustless Pumpkin Pie. It would be easier to make too! You can see the spoonful from the ramekin baked “pie” on the middle photo below.

I suppose this might be an autumnal recipe for those in colder parts. We don’t have such divergent temperatures, so pumpkin pie is good anytime we get pumpkin. Nutmeg and cinnamon with the lovely sweetness of golden orangey pumpkin. Baked goodness. Also great served cold. In fact, some family members (brother and sister in law) only ate theirs chilled.