Tonight some of our friends came over and we had a pumpkin pie baking class from Chef Taka. We had a lot of fun with our friends (maybe too much fun) and made 4 pies. While the pies were baking, we carved faces into acorn squashes. Then we rinsed the squash seeds really well and sautéed them in a hot pan with a lot of olive oil. The cooked seeds tasted a lot better than the roasted pumpkin seeds we made last week. They were a lot more cooked (and we used more oil which gave them more flavor). Thanks Taka — both for showing us how to make pie and for improving our method of cooking squash (or pumpkin) seeds!
A couple of tips we learned while making pumpkin pie. The recipe is really easy and is almost always on the can of pumpkin filling you buy. But these three tips will help make the pies better.
1. Put the pie pan on a rimmed cookie sheet. Then put the filling in the pie and then put the cookie sheet (with the pie) in the oven. The filling is very runny until it cooks and its easy to spill. If it spills on the cookie sheet, no big deal, but if spills on the floor or in the oven, mom gets mad. Plus its easier to pull out the cookie sheet with the pie on it than just pull out the pie.
2. You have to let the pie sit for at least 2 hours before you eat it. Otherwise its not set. ‘
3. (Most important), serve pie with fresh whipped cream.
Chef Taka setting up the ingredients for our class.
Discussing the various steps of pie making
Alex and Alexis hard at work.
The finished products!
Sauteeing the squash seeds…better than roasting them.