Vegan Pumpkin Pie

Seriously. You wouldn't know unless I told you!

Fall is in the air! Some of my favorite foods are associated with this weather. One of Robert's favorites is Pumpkin Pie. Now, I'm not going to tell you that by veganizing this pie it becomes healthy; rest assured, it's still loaded with fat and sugar! And taste!

NOTE: You could certainly take a lot of time and effort out of this pie by using store bought crust and canned pumpkin, and I'm not going to tell you not to. But from scratch cooking is my thing, and at 99 cents for a pie pumpkin, it certainly was less expensive to do so. 

Step One:Assemble your Ingredients

For the crust, you will need:

1 cup whole wheat flour (you can go with the regular stuff if you like, but the whole wheat adds a nuttiness to the pie that I am fond of)

1/3 cup vegetable shortening (see? unhealthy!)

1/2 t salt

2 - 3 T ice water

For the pie, you will need:

1 medium pie pumpkin (or 1-16 oz can of pumpkin)

1 - 16 oz package of silken tofu

1 cu brown sugar

1/2 t salt

1 T pumpkin pie seasoning (Robert brought this home for me, otherwise, I would've used cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg, in whatever increments you like!)

 Step Two:Roast your Pumpkin

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Quarter your pie pumpkin and remove seeds. (I doubled this recipe to freeze half of the pumpkin puree for Thanksgiving!) Save those seeds for roasting! (Sort and wash seeds. Mix with 2 T olive oil and roast at 375 for 20 - 30 minutes until golden brown. Delish!)

Place your pumpkin cut side down on a lined baking sheet and bake for 1 hour.

When cooled, remove skins and puree in food processor. While this is roasting, you may want to move on to step three.

Step Three:Make your Crust

In a food processor, add whole wheat flour, salt, and shortening. Pulse until the mixture forms pea sized balls:

Turn on processor and slowly add ice water until mixture just comes together. Form into a disc and wrap in plastic wrap. 

Store in fridge for 30 minutes. Place a metal baking sheet in the freezer. In the meantime, you can skip to step four and press your tofu.

Once your 30 minutes are up, place your chilled disc into a gallon sized zip lock back. Use scissors to open the bag all around so you have the dough between two separate sheets., as shown.

 Roll out with rolling pin until it is just bigger than the bag, like this:

 Take the baking sheet out of the freezer and place it on top of the flattened crust. This will help to absorb any heat you gave it while rolling and make for easier transfer. Flip the crust over (still on the baking sheet) and peel off the bottom layer of plastic. Take your pie tin (that you sprayed with non-stick spray, right?) and place it face down on the crust. Flip this contraption over and remove the baking sheet and the final layer of plastic. While you don't have to, I'd recommend that you blind bake your pie crust for at 350° F20 minutes. So, it goes from looking like this:

To this:

Make sure you poke it with a fork and anchor it with something (I used dry black eyed peas) to keep it from bubbling.

Step Four:Press your tofu

Silken tofu is perfect for this recipe, but if you don't press it, you won't get a firm pumpkin pie. Pressing is easy. Just remove tofu from package:

And build a contraption like this:

Press for 15 minutes. Time to:

Step Five:Assemble Your Pie!

In a food processor, combine pumpkin puree, pressed tofu, salt, pumpkin pie spice, and brown sugar. Puree until smooth and pour into prepared pie crust. Bake for 20 - 30 minutes at 350° F until a toothpick inserted comes out clean and it goes from looking like this:

To this:

Robert ate a quarter of this pie last night! I supposed for all of the unhealthy comments, you can at least feel good about getting your veggies, whole wheat, and protein from tofu! :) Enjoy!