Apple Sauce Pumpkin Pie

My family requested the pumpkin pie as their choice of dessert for some reason. Although it's no where near Thanksgiving or Christmas, it actually sounded good to me too, so I made my version of pumpkin pie. The original recipe was from Paula Deen's show, it was called apple butter pumpkin pie. It might very well have been the only dish featured in her show that is not super fattening and rich. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed her show. I like this recipe because of its simplicity and ease of making it. In the beginning, I made the pie just as the recipe instructed and it always turned out very good. After the kids came along, my husband and I became more conscientious than ever of the ingredients in the food that we ate daily. From reading the label on the jar of the apple butter, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) was one of the ingredients. I couldn't find any apple butter that didn't include HFCS. Hence, apple butter was shunned from our house.

I started wondering if I could substitute it with apple sauce. Apple sauce usually is not as sweet as apple butter, but who to say we can't tweak the recipe and make it just as tasty. With that thought in mind, I made one to try it out and was pleasantly surprised. Tweaking was not really necessary. It did taste less smooth than using apple butter, well, as we all know, apple sauce has a natural grainy texture, but when it was baked in the pie, the graininess was barely noticeable. The apple sauce didn't take away the sweetness of the pie. It was still yummy. And since apple sauce and apple butter were both made from apples, the pie still has the same taste. From then on, I've used apple sauce to make the pie. So here is the recipe, you may use apple butter as it was originally intended.

1 cup apple sauce
1 cup fresh or canned pumpkin
1/2 cup packed brown sugar (note: packed!)
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
3 eggs, slightly beaten
3/4 cup evaporated milk
1 unbaked 9-inch pie shell
Sweetened whipped cream, for garnish (optional)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
Combine apple sauce, pumpkin, sugar, salt and spices in a bowl. Stir in eggs. Gradually add milk and mix well. Pour into pie shell. Wrap the crust with foil. Bake for about 40 minutes or until set. I always have to stick a toothpick in the middle to test for sure.

On a side note, I always find it impossible to fit all the filling into a 9-inch pie shell. I either end up put the rest of it into small tart shells (like the ones you make fruit tarts with) to make mini-pies (yum!), or use less amount of the ingredients. In addition, in case you can't digest cow's milk (I think that's what evaporated milk is made from?), you can make your own evaporated milk with whichever kind that suits your fancy. At a 3:1 ratio, after a rapid boil, cook the milk down to the right ratio with constant stirring. Let chill in the fridge before usage.

One more thing, the 9-inch pie shell I use is the Publix store brand. Out of the regular frozen isle, this is the only brand of pie shell that doesn't contain hydrogenated oil in its ingredient listing (hopefully it's telling the truth). I didn't go search high and low to see if there is another kind somewhere else.

A tiny bit of the pie came off when I was taking the foil off the crust.