Pies and other holiday recipes

Pulling from the other thread that was drifting …

Isn’t canned “pumpkin” for pies actually made from butternut squash? Or am I misremembering that?

I’ve never made a pumpkin pie from pumpkin or squash, always from a can.

I make apple pies from fresh apples. In the Fall, I will assemble several in disposable tins and then freeze them. When I want apple pie, they go from freezer to oven and turn out great.

That doesn’t sound right. Pumpkin and butternut squash taste quite a bit different. Actaully - most of the squashes seem pretty similar except pumpkin - it is pretty distinct.

It’s made from a bunch of different squashes, not just butternut. But it’s not actually pumpkin, because pumpkin doesn’t keep as well as other squashes.

The only ingredient in the can in my cupboard is “pumpkin”, but I don’t know if there are botanical loopholes they can jump through to get anything else in there.

That seems odd, not sure I believe it.
Pie pumpkins exist. They come available for sale every year around here. They’re smaller than a regular pumpkin. I would expect that that’s what they’re using in canned pie filling.

There’s a well-known chinese food restaurant in Ontario that handmakes a lot of stuff. Their ‘plum sauce’ is actually made from pumpkins.

:pie: :yum:

https://www.delish.com/food-news/a49230/canned-pumpkin-is-lie/#:~:text=As%20it%20turns%20out%2C%20even,It’s%20butternut%20squash.

Mmmm…pie…

1 Like

Snopes says this is not entirely accurate.

1 Like

Interesting. It seems like “Pumpkin” is a rather loosely defined set of plants. And it looks like Dickinson pumpkin (what Libby’s uses for canned pumpkin) is the same species (Cucurbita moschata) as Butternut squash. But species alone doesn’t mean that much as far as crops go. All apples are the same species; peaches and nectarines are the same species. I mean, broccoli, cauliflower, kale and cabbage are all the same species!

Horticulture is hard.

Though the USDA puts out a mean canning guide.

And another cool horticulture thing I’ve read about, getting maple syrup from saplings: https://vtdigger.org/2014/01/27/uvm-discovery-boost-maple-syrup-production/

Growing up, half of my extended family was very into mince pie for the holidays (both Thanksgiving and Christmas). I don’t think the family pies used any meat (or even meat fat) at all, just apple, raisins and spices. But I could never get into it – couldn’t shake the worry of that the next bite might be a bunch of minced beef. (The fact that the other half of the family had an annual get-together where folks largely ate meat pies probably didn’t help.)

I’ll just stick with a plain apple pie, sans raisins, thank you.

I suppose a nice aspic is out, then.

Yes, rai-SINS are an abomination. They should not be added to anything at any time in the known universe. :+1:

I agree.
However, dried cranberries are a delight. We add them to a salad that includes candied pecans, goat cheese, red onions, and an awesome dressing. (Recipe from a friend, so not online, else I’d post it.)

1 Like

Aspic looks like congealed vomit. So… disgusting…

In 1939 king Edward or some king dude visited Canada for their birthday. A bakery in Ottawa made the birthday cake (the bakery still exists and is family run I think).

A Toronto paper published a scaled down version of the 300lb cake. My grandmother clipped the recipe and made it every year at Christmas. When she passed, my aunt made it for years. The gauntlet has been thrown to me now, so it’s now an annual bake off I do.

The recipe is huge so I’ll forego posting it, but it calls for some pretty old school ingredients like treacle. I’d call it a Christmas or fruit cake. Might also be called a Christmas pudding, I’m not sure. I do know theres a lot of brandy in it, and the cakes are more like bricks than what you’d expect from a cake. Anyway, here’s this year’s batch.

1 Like

Oh, I ate some which is why there’s a half brick shown

We have a similar tradition in scale. We make a very thin (traditional preference, not necessarily recipe mandated), not very sweet, “sugar”cookie. Depending on how thick the dough is rolled and the size of the cookie cutters being used we usually get between 500-800 cookies. I think the recipe is an old German recipe, possibly from war time when there wasn’t much sugar.

1 Like

Cool, I’ve read about those kind of cookies and cake, considered making them for remembrance/veterans day activities just haven’t gotten there yet.