Pumpkin Tarts: or, It's always pumpkin-spice season if you truly believe

As Christmas reaches its inevitable conclusion, we at A Book of Cookrye are savoring the joys of Halloween!

Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram, October 28 1933 morning edition, p. 5

Those charming (if slightly passive-aggressive) quotes at the top of the clipping aren't from any adjacent articles on the page. I think the printing department kept a stash of pithy sentences for when they had small, odd-shaped blank spots in the page layout. 

Pumpkin Tarts        Tart shells: 3 cups flour 1 tsp salt 1 c lard (or beef fat or butter) 3 tbsp cold water Mix flour and salt. Cut in lard with a knife. Slowly add water until a firm but non-crumbly dough forms. Roll the dough into 1½-inch balls, then pat each one a bit flat between your hands. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. When the dough has rested, heat oven to 350°. Roll each dough ball into a thin circle, then place them into cupcake pans. Prick each one with a fork. Bake until slightly golden. If any large bubbles form at the beginning of the baking time, pop them with a fork. Allow to cool before pouring in the filling.        Pumpkin filling: 2 c cooked, mashed pumpkin (or 16 oz canned) 1 c white sugar 2 tbsp dark brown sugar 2 tsp cinnamon 1 tsp cloves ½ tsp nutmeg ½ tsp salt ½ tsp ginger 3 eggs 2 c milk Heat oven to 375°. Whisk together sugars, spices, and eggs, beating until eggs are thoroughly mixed. Add remaining ingredients, whisk well. Fill each tart shell to about a quarter-inch below the rim (about a quarter cup of filling per tart). Bake 10 minutes. Then reduce oven to 325° and bake 25 minutes longer. Cool completely in the pan, then use a knife and spatula to remove them (or scoop them out by getting a large spoon under them, like I did). The pies will firm up overnight. Serve with whipped cream or chopped nuts on top. "Helping the Homemaker" by Louise Bennett Weaver, Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram, October 28 1933 morning edition, p. 5

I'm going to be honest, I've never quite been able to make a decent pumpkin pie. Even when I follow the recipe to the letter, my pumpkin pies always come out bland and somewhat off-tasting. Perhaps Louise Bennett Weaver had a better pumpkin pie recipe than every other I've tried heretofore. 

At the very least, I couldn't credibly accuse Louise Bennett Weaver of under-spicing the pie. Have a look at the massive amounts of spices strewn on the sugar. Keep in mind that rather than adding extra-generous shakes of everything, I measured these precisely as written.

This is only the second recipe I've seen that uses just one carefully-measured small spoon of brown sugar to add a precisely-calibrated amount of flavor. (The first was a brownie recipe from our current favorite well-worn cookbook) However, this recipe's hesitant use of brown sugar worked out perfectly for us, because brown sugar has been exceptionally scarce these past few weeks. 

At this point, we hit a minor hiccup in our recipe. I was going to cut it in half, and was under the mistaken impression that it uses four eggs. However, Louise only cracked three eggs into her pumpkin pie recipe. And so, we once again had to perform what is quickly becoming a routine operation here at Our Kitchen of Cookrye: dividing an egg in half. I don't even get mad about halving eggs anymore. After doing enough times, it's become quick and almost easy. Also, even though it involves getting out extra cooking utensils, I don't have to hand-wash any of them because a dishwasher lives in this kitchen.

It's either subdivide an egg or make twice as many tarts.

After the short egg-splitting detour, this recipe practically flew together. You only have to put eggs and sugar into the bowl and, as Fanny Cradock would say, think of someone that you've never liked but you're too well-bred to say anything. In less than half a minute, your pie filling is ready to receive the pumpkin. 

Perhaps I thought a bit too well of someone I didn't like, because the pie got as whipped as cream. It later occurred to me- I'm pretty sure you could just put everything in a blender.

Barely a minute after we'd finished measuring the spices, we were ready to add half a can of autumn to our pie.

Every now and then I've thought myself lazy for always using canned pumpkin instead of an actual fresh one. After all, Louise Bennett Weaver doesn't tell us to use a can of pumpkin. But the last time I mentioned this to my mother, she told me that you can't tell the difference. 

Whether you stew your own pumpkin or let a cannery do it for you, Louise Bennett Weaver's recipe was very promising. This pie filling, while perhaps a bit too watery for me to know whether it would set while baking, tasted like autumn at Starbucks. It was even the perfect shade of autumnal orange.

This was the runniest pie filling I've made in a long time. I thought that perhaps Louise overestimated how much milk I should have added to it. I was going to dispense this with a ladle, but it proved easier to put the pie filling into a measuring cup with a pour spout and carefully fill each pie shell. 

We had just a smidge of extra pie filling after all our tart shells had been properly pumpkined. Perhaps I made my tart shells a bit thicker-sided than Louise did, meaning I didn't get as many of them out of a batch of dough. But then again, this was only about a half-tart's worth of pumpkin, so I couldn't have baked it even I did have one more tart shell.

The pumpkin tarts baked nicely. They didn't curdle or otherwise start to look like a mistake. In fact, towards the end of the baking time, they actually puffed up! I don't know if that's a good sign or not, but it certainly seems nice.

 I hoped they would stay puffy, but they fell back to their pre-baking height in less than five minutes. 

I have got to find a way to prevent my pies from sticking when I make them in a cupcake pan. Granted, I've never had any pies come out of the pan irreparably ruined. But it'd be nice to make cute mini-pies without leaving the pan looking like this:

Well, let's set aside the pie pan since it needs to soak for a while anyway. I figured out a wonderful way to repurpose the extra pumpkin filling: pour it into iced coffee!

I have to give Louise Bennett Weaver credit. These are some really good pumpkin tarts. I knew they'd be good when I sampled what remained in the mixing bowl, and I was right. I know I wasn't the only one who liked them because they kept disappearing when I wasn't looking. 

If I was to get a bit nitpicky, I would note that the crust didn't quite bake all the way through. Louise didn't tell us to bake our tart shells before filling them, but I recommend that you do.

The day we baked these pies, the filling was so soft and delicate-textured that it seemed like it would revert to liquid at any second. I've seen some east-coast food writers rhapsodize about crab cakes that seem like only an outside force field is holding them together, and we had that today in pumpkin form. But after leaving them out overnight, they firmed up to the density of a lighter-than-usual cheesecake. 

However, because the crust hadn't quite baked all the way through, it started to fall away from the tarts on all sides. It made the tarts look like the pumpkin was shrinking. Again, I recommend baking the empty tart shells before you give them the pumpkin.

In conclusion, these are some really good pumpkin pies! We topped them with a squirt of whipped cream, which made them perfect. You should also know that the pies perfectly matched the iron I got at the thrift store.