Maple Pumpkin Pie

Megan's parents came up from Waukesha this weekend for a joint family dinner. Colleen and Patrick O'Brien, representing the Irish-Catholic contingent of this whole enterprise. Patrick is a retired firefighter who initially looked at me the way you look at someone who's dating your daughter and clearly thinks he's not good enough. Which, fair. But we've been warming up to each other over the past two years and he actually called me "Jake" twice this weekend without any visible discomfort, which I'm counting as significant progress.

Colleen, on the other hand, loves me. I think she loves me specifically because I cook. Megan is what I privately call a "survival eater" — she will eat food if food is present, but she doesn't think about it much, she doesn't plan for it, and her idea of cooking is assembling things that don't require heat. Colleen is apparently not this way. Colleen makes proper Irish stew. So when I showed up two years ago making bigos from scratch, something clicked.

For this dinner I made two things: kielbasa and sauerkraut, slow-simmered with beer and onion and caraway, and a brown butter apple cake for dessert using apples from a farm stand I found on the way back from the brewery last week. I figured kielbasa as the Polish anchor and apple cake as neutral territory. Everybody eats apple cake. Nobody argues about apple cake.

It worked. Dinner was two and a half hours. Colleen asked for the apple cake recipe. Patrick had seconds of the kielbasa. Tom and Patrick talked sports for roughly ninety consecutive minutes, which is their version of bonding. Linda and Colleen compared notes on what it's like to have adult children who are about to get married, which sounded either wonderful or terrifying depending on which one of them was talking.

After they left, Megan and I washed dishes and she said, "My dad likes you now." I said, "Define now." She said, "He said you made good sausage. That's basically a marriage proposal from Patrick O'Brien." I'll take it.

Colleen asking for a dessert recipe is the highest compliment I know how to receive, and I wasn’t about to let the moment pass without having something worth writing down. The apple cake I made that night was riffing on the same instinct behind this maple pumpkin pie — something warm, deeply spiced, and rooted enough in the familiar that nobody at the table is going to argue with it. If you’re cooking for a crowd that includes a retired Irish-Catholic firefighter who is just beginning to thaw, you want a dessert that does its job quietly and completely, and this one does exactly that.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 55 min | Total Time: 1 hr 15 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

1 (9-inch) unbaked pie crust, homemade or store-bought
1 can (15 oz) pure pumpkin puree
3/4 cup pure maple syrup
2 large eggs
1 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Preheat oven to 425°F. Fit pie crust into a 9-inch pie plate, crimp the edges, and refrigerate while you make the filling.
Mix the filling. In a large bowl, whisk together the pumpkin puree and maple syrup until smooth. Add the eggs one at a time, whisking after each addition. Stir in the heavy cream and vanilla extract.
Add the spices. Add the cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and salt. Whisk until fully combined and the filling is silky and uniform.
Fill and bake. Pour the filling into the chilled crust. Bake at 425°F for 15 minutes, then reduce the oven temperature to 350°F and continue baking for 35–40 minutes, until the center is just set with a slight jiggle.
Cool before serving. Remove from oven and let cool completely on a wire rack, at least 2 hours. The filling will firm up as it cools. Serve at room temperature or chilled, with whipped cream if desired.

Nutrition (per serving)

Maple Pumpkin Pie — The Dessert That Sealed the Deal with Patrick O’Brien