Two Pumpkin Pies

In other posts, I’ve talked about various ingredients that remind me of Grandma. Here’s one more:

Knox Gelatine wasn’t just an ingredient to Grandma, although she used it a lot. It was also a health supplement. Claiming that it was good for her hair and nails, she drank it plain, dissolved in a glass of warm water.  

Never fear–-that is not the recipe I'm sharing with you today. Instead, I decided to get a jump on pumpkin pie because it's never too early to start thinking about Thanksgiving pies.  

Grandma's pumpkin pie was beloved in our family, so I was surprised to see a different recipe in her box called Pumpkin Chiffon Pie. I wasn't surprised to see that it called for one of Grandma's favorite ingredients, Knox Gelatine. I didn't remember ever having this pie before, but I was intrigued by the recipe because it was cooked on the stove, not baked. I did have some trepidation about it--more on that later--but that didn’t stop me from putting it to the test.   

How to make Pumpkin Chiffon Pie

The first order of business was to soften the powdered gelatine in a quarter cup of cold water. 

While the gelatine did its thing, I separated the eggs and added the yolks, pumpkin, sugar, spices, and evaporated milk to a saucepan. 

Stir constantly, the recipe said, and my hand fell automatically into the figure 8 motion Grandma taught me as I cooked the mixture over medium heat. I watched with interest as the pumpkin mixture thickened and became pudding-like in texture.  

As shown above, the gelatine had softened into something ressembling a hockey puck. I plopped it into the hot pumpkin and stirred until it dissolved.  

I set that aside to cool then turned my attention to the next step, the one that concerned me. The recipe said to beat the egg whites and fold them--raw--into the cooled pumpkin mixture. Here's the thing--I have a phobia of raw egg whites, possibly developed after a night of throwing up. My mom denies it, but I think it was the dessert we ate the day before, the one containing raw egg whites, that gave me food poisoning. 

I searched for another solution and landed on pasteurized egg whites.  

Could they be beaten? I wasn't sure, but I had to try. If it didn't work, I would beat the regular egg whites and hope that I could pray the food poisoning away. 

Did it work? Yes!

It formed lovely peaks, which probably would have been even stiffer if I'd remembered to reserve half the sugar for beating in with the egg whites. The next step was to fold the two things together. 

I then poured the mixture into a gingersnap crust. I'm not sharing the recipe for the crust because the proportion of crumbs to butter was off, and it was scrawny and unattractive. 

The pie firmed up in the fridge overnight, and, despite the ugliness of the crust, it cut into beautiful slices. 

The Verdict

Yum. There is no other word. Everyone at the table loved it, and some said they liked it even better than traditional pumpkin pie. 

What's the difference, you ask? Pumpkin Chiffon has a light, fluffy texture but it retains the good old-fashioned pumpkin flavor we know and love. This pie was particularly spicy because of the gingersnap crust, but the spices in the filling and the crust married well. I might tone the crust down next time, possibly do a half-and-half mix of graham cracker and gingersnap crumbs. Top that off with a dollop of real whipped cream, and this is a dessert you will crave all year long.  

But wait, the testing wasn't done. I wanted to see how Grandma's regular pumpkin pie recipe compared. 

As you can see by the recipe card above, I had made this one before. However, I had defected to another pumpkin pie recipe that made one pie instead of two. Grandma's recipe was one of her signature dishes, something she perfected over the course of her long life. It was time to go back and give it another try. 

The thing that's different about Grandma's recipe is this: Knox Gelatine. Yes, that's right. She added it to the rest of the traditional ingredients to achieve a firmer end result. 

The recipe didn't say to soften the gelatine first, so I just sprinkled it in. It's on a scale because I wanted to try making half the recipe. 

The rest of the ingredients followed, and I stirred them together with my mini whipper. Easy as pie.    

I then poured the mixture into an unbaked crusted I had made with this recipe of Grandma's: Good Pie Crust.

Here's what it looked like after it came out.

And here is a slice. 

The Verdict

Amazing. Grandma's signature pumpkin pie had a firm, flan-like texture that I loved. I wouldn' t have known there was gelatine in it because it tastes of warm fall spices and conjures up memories of Thanksgiving day. My mother said she liked it better than the Pumpkin Chiffon, but the fact that she prefers a regular pie crust probably had something to do with that. As for me, it was hard to say. This one was less sweet, but honestly, I would take a slice of either pie at anytime. 

Grandma knew her pumpkin pie. 

To try out either or both recipes, click on it to download or print it out. Enjoy!