Sunday, May 23, 2010

Baking Disaster of the Week - Crustless Vegan Pumpkin Pie

Ah, this is a tragic tale indeed. It began many moons ago, back in the fall and really has continued on due to my stubborn tenacity. I first tried to make this at Thanksgiving last year. It looked like doggy pooh (although a friend of mine insists that all pumpkin pie looks like baby pooh), and was really bland tasting as well. But, I was desperate to make this work because I absolutely love pumpkin pie and have missed it for so long so I tried this recipe again determined to make it work!

I would like to point out that if you follow the actual recipe, instead of substituting the heck out of it like I do, I am sure this is a quick and easy recipe to make. Unfortunately this disaster took 4 tries to get it right, and still needs further adjustment, especially with the spices! But at least it has reached the stage now where it is enjoyable and gets many guest compliments.

I got this recipe from the Gluten-Free Goddess. I have tried several of her recipes and I find them easy to adjust and easy to follow, not to mention delicious! Make sure you scroll down to the comments under the recipes to read what problems others encountered with the recipe and what the authors suggestions are, or be inspired by things others attempted with the recipe. I found this very helpful in my case.

I had to make some substitutions to this recipe because it would not work for me how it was written. I am sure there is some chemistry there I don't understand, but mostly I found if you substitute coconut milk for the milk, do not add the oil in the recipe, if you are using honey as the sweetener, or it does not seem to cook, and then it does not really set :s This may be more of an issue due to the fact that I use honey instead of cane sugar. I am beginning to experiment with palm sugar, we will see what it does in this recipe!

I also found the spicing rather bland, I like my pumpkin with more ginger, and I found added lots of fresh minced ginger made it very yummy. The other spices I can't seem to get quite right though...This on will be an ongoing disaster until I am satisfied ;)

If you love pumpkin this is in fact a delicious and easy recipe, so you should definitely give it a try and let me know what you think!