Will Pumpkin Pie Make Me Famous???

So I got an email the other day from America's Test Kitchen which said (and I quote) :

"America’s Test Kitchen is gearing up to tape its 10th season. If you have any funny stories, experiences, or have a related cooking question about the following recipes, and would like to share them with America’s Test Kitchen, please submit them to us!"

I clicked on the link in their email (naturally!) which took me to a listing of the recipes they were interested in. Well don't you know pumpkin pie was on the list. I have a funny story about pumpkin pie and so I thought I would send it to them. Who knows, maybe I could get on TV! Nerd TV. But hey it's TV and not the disgusting kind either. So what follows is the contents of the email. I will keep you posted...

My Mother’s Pumpkin Pie

My mother gave me her pumpkin pie recipe and that is what I used for many years. I always thought of it as a family heirloom recipe. One that was developed and honed over the years to perfection. Only it didn’t taste anything like perfection. It was actually kind of awful.

There was one ingredient in it that I never liked. The ingredient in question? Condensed milk. I have never liked condensed milk. Ever. The thought of cooking down milk and evaporating out much of the water was never a culinary process that I thought maximized the taste and flavor of anything much less a delicate dairy product like milk. In my opinion, evaporated milk starts with an off taste which carries through to everything its used in.

So after many years of making my mother’s pumpkin pie, I revolted. I swore I was never going use condensed milk again. So I decided to get out my various cookbooks and research pumpkin pie recipes.

Now this is all well and good you may say. However, the day I decided to do this was just before Thanksgiving Day. I had been assigned the job of bringing the pies to dinner the next day. So there was no real time to experiment on the recipes. It was going to be a one shot deal. The most worrisome thing of all, was I would be bringing a pie that no one had tasted before. Would my family revolt at not having the “family classic”? The pressure was on.

Back to my recipe research. I got out my various recipe books to look over when it dawned on me to begin my recipe search in the most basic place of all: the back label of the Libby’s 100% Pure Pumpkin can.

The recipe started out well listing sugar, salt, flavors, egg and pumpkin. Suddenly it took a serious turn for the worse. It had evaporated milk in the recipe! Where did that come from? Oh my god, I thought, this recipe looks familiar to my mother’s recipe. I quickly got out the family recipe to compare with the one on the can. Sure enough, the family “heirloom” came from the back of a can!

Talk about disappointment. Here I was thinking I had a recipe which contained the collective wisdom of the ages. Could it get much worse? Thus emboldened by the discovery of a self inflicted con, I decided to introduce the family to a brand new pumpkin pie recipe for Thanksgiving. Consequences be damned.

My search for a new pumpkin pie recipe ended in the America’s Test Kitchen Baking Book. Here was a recipe that used milk and cream instead of condensed milk. That substitution alone convinced me to give the recipe a try. Careful study and execution of the recipe assured success. The next day when I served the pie to my family, there was universal acclaim. In fact, I had never seen my family eat so much pumpkin pie before. The proof was in the eating and that was the end of my mother’s heirloom recipe. We have a new recipe in the family now that I have already passed on to my children. Thanks ATK! Job well done!