Caramelized Pumpkin Pie with Honey-Orange Whipped Cream excerpted from Milk Street Shorts: Recipes That Pack a Punch by Christopher Kimball. Photography by Joe Murphy.
Transform your home cooking with the smartest, simplest, most powerful recipes from the James Beard Award-winning team at Milk Street.
In the kitchen, brevity is brilliant. Short recipes are the ones cooks remember best—not only because they’re simple to make and easy to repeat, but because they are boiled down to their elemental beauty and charm.
In Milk Street Shorts, Christopher Kimball and his team of cooks and editors have developed a repertoire of nearly 150 genius recipes that are casual, improvisational, and fun. These recipes are not just short—they’re bolder, better cooking because they’re short. Their essential cleverness gives them power that does not require long ingredient lists or all-day cooking.
And every recipe packs a punch—throw-it-together meals like “Nothing Soup,”Chili Crisp Peanut Noodles, and Five-Ingredient Pork and Kimchi Stew, snacks and side dishes like Sunflower Hummus, Crispy Spiced Chickpeas, and Salt and Vinegar Smashed Potatoes, and smart ways to use your oven, like Reverse-Sear Pork Loin, Skillet Lasagna, and Two-Hour Turkey. Recipes are organized by simplicity—Short, Shorter, and Shortest—with chapters including skillet suppers, sheet-pan tray bakes, and weeknight desserts like Clementine Blender Cake.
Milk Street Shorts: Recipes That Pack a Punch by Christopher Kimball is available at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Indigo.ca.
Caramelized Pumpkin Pie
START TO FINISH: 1 hour 40 minutes (40 minutes active), plus cooling
MAKES one 9-inch pie
For a lighter, fresher take on pumpkin pie with a pronounced pumpkin flavour, we intensify canned pumpkin by giving it a quick sauté with dark brown sugar. This cooks off excess moisture and caramelises the sugars. Don’t use canned pumpkin pie filling for this recipe. Look for unsweetened canned pumpkin puree; the only ingredient listed should be pumpkin.
15-ounce can pumpkin puree
149 grams (¾ cup packed) dark brown sugar
¼ cup bourbon
8-ounce container (1 cup) crème fraîche
⅛ teaspoon table salt
3 large eggs, beaten
9-inch pie shell (store-bought or your favourite recipe), partially baked
Honey-orange whipped cream (recipe follows), to serve
Heat the oven to 325°F with a rack in the middle position. In a 12-inch non-stick skillet, stir together the pumpkin and sugar. Cook over medium high, stirring, until the mixture is thickened, darkened in colour and reduced to about 1½ cups, about 10 minutes. Reduce to medium-low, add the bourbon and scrape up any browned bits.
Transfer to a medium bowl.
To the pumpkin mixture, whisk in the crème fraîche and salt. Add the eggs and whisk until homogeneous. Place the pie pastry in the oven; warm for about 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and pour in the filling. Bake until the edges just start to crack and the centre sets, 30 to 35 minutes. Cool completely on a wire rack. Serve at room temperature or chilled.
Honey-Orange Whipped Cream
Start to Finigh: 5 minutes
MAKES about 3 cups
In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine 1½ cups cold heavy cream, 3 tablespoons honey and ½ teaspoon grated orange zest. Using the whisk attachment, mix on low until frothy, about 30 seconds. Scrape the bowl with a spatula to make sure the honey is incorporated. Mix on medium-high and whip until soft peaks form, 2 to 3 minutes.
Recipe published with permission from Hachette Book Group.