So my family loves pie and it’s naturally sweet. And yes we are already adding sugar to our pie but we don’t need so much extra. And who wants preservatives? I read once that American bodies decompose at a slower rate than the rest of the world because of the preservatives we eat. Yuck, right? So we try to avoid as many chemicals and extra sugar additives but at the same time we want some yummy pumpkin pie.

So we make everything from scratch and try to pick healthier options whenever possible while still understanding pie is a fun desert we love to eat.

Pie Crust

1 cup of cold water

1/4 of a teaspoon of salt

3/4 cup of all purpose flour

3/4 cup wheat flour

1/4 stick of butter

1/4 cup of olive oil

We use our KitchenAid Stand Mixer with the dough hook and mix it. (We learned how to use a stand mixer with a much cheaper Sunbeam and it worked fine, for a few years when we were moving around.)

Then put it in the refrigerator for an hour.

After the hour take it out, roll (we use our French roller as it works better for us) on a wood board. Then once it’s even we put it in the pie pan, ours is corning ware, and bake for 15 minutes.

We don’t use marbles because we don’t want anything rubbing onto our pie. Yes it will fluff up a little bit at the bottom but when we bake with the pie that should get pushed down with the weight of the pie. We just don’t want to take the chance whatever chemicals were used in making the marbles gets into our food. We’d rather eat as clean without chemicals as possible.

Bake pie at 400 for 15 minutes and then take it out. Yes the bottom will have bubbled a little but we are sure there is no chemical coming off the marbles that might ever get in. And the pie ingredients will push it down so we’re good.

Pumpkin Pie

1 can of no preservatives pumpkin puree

2 teaspoons of cinnamon

1 teaspoon of nutmeg

1/2 cup brown sugar

3 eggs

1 cup of milk

1/4 teaspoon of salt

Now for the milk, a lot of recipes will say ‘evaporated’ or creams or any of that. We just use the milk that we like because it’s healthier and your choice. If you’re into soy, almond, whatever then use that. You don’t need to add the extra preservatives to make it sweeter. We usually cook with brown eggs, cage free and free range as much as possible and brown sugar because we don’t want the bleach and half dead chickens making our eggs and we don’t want the bleach used for making sugar white.

We mix this in our KitchenAid Stand Mixer.

Now onto baking! Once the pie crust baked at 15 minutes (unless you prepped that and good for you… take it out.

Pour your liquid-ish mixture into the pie crust. Bake 15 minutes at 400.

Then turn the temperature down to 350 and cook the pie at 350.

Once done, you still have a delicious pie, still sweet with sugar but you have the knowledge now that it’s free of preservatives and chemicals.

Note: We have used the food processor to puree the pumpkin but it’s so seedy. It’s hard. And we use the puree to make it from the can but ensure it’s only puree, with nothing extra on the label.