Easy as PIE!

I love the cheesy titles.

Until this past Saturday, I’ had never made pie. It seems like such a daunting task, and I in all honesty I’m not a huge pie fan. It’s like eating jam inside a crust. But being Thanksgiving, I decided to make vegan pumpkin pie. Luckily, I was able to make two, because the first one didn’t work out so well! I forgot the molasses and the sugar….

Ingredients

• One can of pumpkin
• ½ cup of medium tofu
• 12oz of almond or rice milk (or soy)
• ½ cup of brown sugar
• 1/3 cup cornstarch
• 2 tbsp molasses
• 1 tsp salt
• ¼ tsp ginger
• ¼ tsp cloves
• 1 tbsp cinnamon

For the Crust

If you’ve got time on your hands (and want to go all out) you can make your own crust. The ingredients are quite simple: pastry flour, salt, vegan margarine and cold water. Actually my sister makes her own quiche crust all the time and uses regular flour. Since the pie is full of sugar, don’t worry about making the crust sweet. But it does double the preparation time, so you might just want to buy a pre-made crust at the grocery store. I was able to find one without glucose at Whole Foods/Capers. But being Whole Foods it was about $4.50! So consider yourself warned.

**You can also grind up about ¼ cup of graham crackers and add them into the crust with the flour.

Directions

So at this point you’ve made your crust or bought a handy dandy one from the grocery store. If you’ve made your own (congrats) make sure you bake it for a bit before adding the filling.

Mix the wet ingredients together in a bowl (pumpkin, almond milk, tofu and molasses). It helps if you chop up the tofu first, especially if you don’t have an electric mixer.

Beat it all together until the tofu is blended. It will never be perfect, so expect to see tiny white pieces but this recipe works better with medium tofu than silken.

Add in the dry ingredients, including all your spices. Stir well.

Pour the batter into your pie crust and place in the oven at 425 degrees for 10 minutes. Then turn the heat down to 350 degrees and leave it in the over for about 40-50 minutes.

Take it out of the oven and set it aside for one hour. Once it’s cooled, cover it with tin foil and place it in the fridge for at least 45 minutes. At this point you can leave it in the fridge until you serve the pie. The best thing about pumpkin pie is that it’s supposed to be mushy so it’s hard to mess up! My favourite kind of baking!

xx

PS: regarding the iron post, my Grandma says molasses is good with toast.