I’ve been making pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving for the past 14 years.  It was something my Grandmother use to do but passed on to me when she hit her mid-80s and moved to an assisted living facility where she could no longer cook.  For the first few years I was deathly afraid of making pie crusts and would spend at least an hour on the phone on Thanksgiving Eve getting a pep talk from Grandma.

Grandma has since passed on and while I miss the pep talks I still heed her number one piece of advice which was “just relax and do it.”   In light of this here are the two key ingredients in my pie crust recipe:

It’s not what you’re thinking.  OK, the drinking wine part is true.  But I don’t call slapping a store bought crust into a pan “baking a pie.”  As I feel compelled to tell the checkout clerks in Safeway each year when I’m purchasing said crust, I really do make my own pie crusts!  I just keep the store brought crust on the counter where I can see it.  It reminds me that I’ll still have something to fall back on just in case I screw up the homemade crust.  Knowing I have that back up crust I can sip my wine while I “just relax and do it.”

Otherwise my pie crust recipe is nothing special.  I just use whatever they recipe they put on the Crisco package.  Except I only use half the amount of Crisco and substitute the rest with butter.  That was Grandma’s trick.  It not only gives the crust a nice butter flavor but I think it also makes it easier to handle.  A pure Crisco pie crust is too delicate I think.

As for the pumpkin part, after years of following what I thought was Grandma’s sacred recipe scrawled on a sheet of yellow notebook paper I was shocked to discover that it was the same one Libby puts on the label of their canned pumpkin.  The only difference is that Grandma uses two cups of half and half instead of evaporated milk, which I must say makes it.  Grandma also always told me to throw in a couple tablespoons of molasses “to give the custard a nice brown color.”

The most important element of Grandma’s pumpkin pies is the care that goes into making them.  I know that sounds sappy but it’s true.  The thing that made my grandmother’s pumpkin pies most special for me growing up is that every year she made three miniature pies, one each for me and my brothers.  So even though I may have years when I screw up the crust and need to use my back up or I forget to throw in a couple of tablespoons of molasses, I never forgo making a miniature pie for each kid at Thanksgiving dinner.