Filling

• 3 large whole eggs plus,
• 1 large egg yolk
• 1 1/2 cups canned or fresh pumpkin puree
• 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• 1 1/2 cups canned evaporated milk

Preheat overn to 375
On a lightly floured work surface, roll out one disk of dough to a 12-inch round. With a dry pastry brush, sweep off excess flour; fit dough into a 9-inch pie plate, pressing into the edges. Trim dough to meet the edges of the pie plate. Prick the bottom of the dough all over with a fork.
(Here’s where Martha says to roll out the other disk of dough and make little triangles to put around the edge of the pie plate. If you have a life, you can skip this and save the disk for another pie and another day.)Chill pie shell until firm, about 30 minutes.
Whisk together the egg yolk with one tablespoon water
When pie crust is chilled, brush the edges with the egg wash
Line chilled pie shell with parchment paper, leaving a 1-inch overhang.Fill with pie weights or dried beans. Bake until the edges are just beginning to turn golden, 15 to 20 minutes. Remove parchment and weights. Return crust to oven; continue baking until light golden all over, 15 to 20 minutes more. Cool completely on a wire rack.

Reduce oven temperature to 350.
In a large bowl, whisk together pumpkin, sugar, cinnamon, ginger, salt, nutmeg, whole eggs, and evaporated milk until combined.
Pour mixture into the cooled crust, and bake until the filling is set wround the edges but still slightly soft in the center, 40 to 45 minutes.
(Check the crust periodically. If it gets too dark, cover the edges with foil.)
The filling will be just slightly loose in the center, but will firm up as it cools.
Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Pie can be kept at room temperature, loosely covered with aluminum foil, for up to 2 days.

Okay, I was taken in by the promise of its not being heavy and cloying by way of its being more like a pudding, even though said pudding required the purchase of a double boiler because enough already with the metal bowl jumping around on top of the boiling water in the saucepan. The double boiler method did make the pie light, if light means a little too mushy to ever set, but the cloying part didn’t go away because it turned out to be from the cloves, not from the stingy approach to brown sugar.

But what really didn’t work was the banana. The what? Right, I thought a banana was odd, too. But since I’m trying to stop living on red licorice and Diet Coke alone, I thought, okay, a little fresh fruit couldn’t hurt. But, no. A pumpkin-banana- cream-pudding-pie was not what the Pilgrims ordered.

Generally I make a recipe twice so as to correct any mistakes and add the pie to my Can Do list, but who needs Christmas to be confectionery scrapbook of a failed Thanksgiving?

So where do you go in a situation like this? Back to Zen Master Martha, of course, even if her show on the Hallmark channel did just get canceled. Ratings are their issue, for pie making you can’t beat The Martha Stewart Baking Handbook.

The result — the most seriously flawless Christmas Pumpkin Pie that ever lived. Perfect pumpkin color and texture and incredible, unbelievably rich yet sweetly buoyant flavor that got its non-cloying brightness from ginger instead of cloves. And did I mention the perfect crust? Although I don’t use any salt. (Don’t mention this to Martha).

So thanks, Martha, for the perfect Christmas Pumpkin Pie. Minus the perfect life.

1. 6 tbs unsalted butter at room temperature
2. ½ cup confectioner’s sugar
3. 2 large eggs
4. 1½ cups all purpose flour
5. 2 tsp heavy cream

Use the paddle attachment on your electric mixer and set it to low speed to combine the butter and sugar

Add the egg yolks and continue beating until just combined

Still using low speed, add ¾ cup of the flour until blended, about 30 seconds

Add the remaining ¾ cup flour, plus the salt and cream; mix until the flour is no longer visible

Turn out the dough onto plastic wrap and shape it into a flattened disk

Wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate for at least 2 hours before rolling out.

1. 2 cups flour
2. 2 sticks butter cut into pieces
3. 1 cup ice water

Pour the flour into the bowl of an electric mixer

Add the butter

Using the paddle attachment with the mixer on low, slowly add the water until the mix looks like crumble — 30 seconds is all it should take

The dough still has to be rolled out, so don’t overwork it. Less is less.

Let me say right up front that I’ve made a bunch of recipes from Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook and I think the book is terrific, so it was probably my fault for adding like three extra drops of heavy cream to the batter for the Pistachio Tartlets with Crème Fraiche Filling, which caused the dough to become wet and sticky. That’s the thing about Martha recipes, you have to do exactly what she says, exactly the way she says to do it. Well right, or she wouldn’t be Martha. Her biscuit recipe makes exactly 12 biscuits. Period. And they’re amazing. So clearly, with Martha it’s best to obey. But not only did I not obey, I substituted ground walnuts for pistachios. But that seemed to be okay because I used the same amount that the recipe called for.

Then I figured that after an hour in the fridge maybe the dough would get normal. And it did roll out perfectly, so for a blissful moment I was like, okay, we’re good. Except a couple of seconds later the dough returned to its too-wet incarnation and had to be scoop-scraped and dragged off the French roll-out mat and shmushed into the tartlet dishes, which were really Emile Henry pie-let dishes because I didn’t have mini tart dishes, and there was no way the dough was going to drape or trim like a proper tart.

The crème fraiche and heavy cream filling dictated by Martha sounded good but a little too sour- creamy for my taste, and also I was making it for friends and I knew that my friend’s husband wouldn’t go for the sour creaminess either, so I added more heavy cream, which made the filling more like whipped cream. It tasted good but I get where Martha was going with the crème fraiche. Also, instead of using only fresh raspberries, I combined raspberries and diced glazed oranges that had been marinating in a quarter of a cup of water with two tablespoons of Splenda, which made the fruit more of a compote.

So I ended up making a walnut tart with whipped cream-crème fraiche filling, and raspberry and glazed orange compote rather than pistachio tartlets with crème fraiche and fresh raspberries. It was still really delicious but I guess the moral here is — one, listen to Martha, and two, if you’re not going to listen, buy excellent ingredients and remember that almost anything looks good in Emile Henry.

Long way of saying, if anyone has any thoughts, techniques or general rules of thumb for low-risk recipe improvs or substitutions, please feel free to share them. That stomach-dropping moment when it becomes obvious you’re facing a possible meltdown is no way to spend a Sunday, especially given how precarious things have become during the work week. That is, if we even are employed anymore, right? Feel free to share any anxiety about that, too.

Eggs are so easy to take for granted, unless you’re a chicken. Yolks, being the life force they are, help crusts to be tender. The whites are for structure. When you’re whipping egg whites, the eggs should always be at room temperature to achieve maximum loft. If you forget to take them out of the refrigerator, just put them in a bowl of hot water before separating. And try not to over-beat your eggs. They hate that. Or over-fold the beaten egg whites either. Both will deflate the bubbles that create the height.

Moving on — eggs are sized according to weight. A dozen Large eggs in the shell weigh 24 ounces, while an equal number of Extra Large eggs weigh 27 ounces, so it’s really important to use the size egg the recipe calls for. Refrigerate eggs as soon as you get them home and use them by their sell-by date, which is 30 days past their packing date. As for the salmonella situation, cooking eggs at 140℉ for three minutes, or to an end temperature of 160℉ will kill any bacteria.

The Crust

Low Sodium Snafu Pie Crust for a single crust pie, blind baked

The Filling

1. 5 large eggs
2. 1 tbs heavy cream
3. 1 ¼ cups tightly packed light-brown sugar
4. 6 tbs unsalted butter, melted
5. ⅓ cup light corn syrup
6. ⅓ cup unsulfured molasses
7. 1 tbs bourbon
8. 1 tsp vanilla extract
9. ¼ tsp salt
10. 1 ⅔ cups pecans, coarsely chopped, plus
11. ⅓ cup whole pecan halves
12. baking sheet lined with parchment paper

Preheat the oven to 350°

In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, brown sugar, butter, corn syrup, molasses, bourbon, vanilla and salt

Stir in the chopped pecans

Pour filling into the cooled pie shell

Arrange whole pecans on top of pie

Bake (on the half sheet lined with parchment) until a knife inserted into the center of the pie comes out clean, about 45 minutes

Transfer the pie to a wire rack to cool completely