Last updated on December 30th, 2020 at 09:58 am
Kabocha pie is a delightful alternative to the traditional Thanksgiving pumpkin pie.
Kabocha pie has won me over. I neither love nor loathe pumpkin pie—it’s always just been something I have to include on my Thanksgiving menu. No more. I may not even need pecan pie with this recipe.
Kabocha Squash
I don’t know if my subconscious mind has been taken over by SCOBY or if I have a very sophisticated autocorrect, but I keep typing kombucha instead of kabocha—the words are easy to mix up, but they are completely different beasts. While kombucha is a fermented tea, kabocha is a squash (Japanese squash).
It’s not very different from pumpkin, but it’s pretty easy to work with. The squash (either red or green) come in manageable sizes—they can be small like acorn squash or they can be bigger but slightly smaller than a standard pumpkin. You can find them in the supermarket, but you’ll have the best luck finding them at the farmers’ market, Whole Foods or Asian markets like 99 Ranch.
Filling
For this recipe, the squash is roasted the way you would roast butternut squash or acorn squash. Because this is going in pie, it also has to be pureed. To keep things simple, I let the squash cool and then pureed it with the evaporated milk for the pie filling. The result is very smooth and it makes stirring in the eggs and sugar a little bit easier.
This recipe yields two pies in order to use up a whole can of evaporated milk. This recipe is easily halved if you don’t mind leftover evaporated milk to use in other recipes.
I also used chancaca (a sort of Chilean brown sugar) which is amazing—if you have the opportunity to use it, I highly recommend it, but granulated sugar works just fine.
Pie Crust
MHO, the cookie crust is really what makes this pie. Unlike pastry dough, you don’t have to mess with a lightly floured surface or try to crimp the edges for a crust that’s too bland to go up against the pie anyway…so a cookie crust is a no brainer. The other is best for pecan pie anyway.
That said, the custard filling fuses with the cookies and creates this whole separate layer between the crust and the filling. Magic. I’ve experimented with how to do it just right with just the right ingredients. Do not deviate. It’s perfect. And you don’t even need whipped cream.
Spices
I didn’t do traditional pumpkin pie spice—because the crust is so rich, I just used ground cinnamon and ginger. Cloves seemed like they would push it over the top, so I left them off.
Kabocha Pie
Ingredients
- kabocha squash roasted and removed from the rind
- evaporated milk
- brown sugar
- eggs
- ground ginger
- ground cinnamon
Gingersnap Crust
- 13 oz ginger snaps divided, crushed
- 6 TB granulated sugar divided
- 12 TB butter divided, melted
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350℉.
- Cut kabocha squash in half. Remove seeds and rub flesh with olive oil.
- Place squash on a baking sheet and transfer to the preheated oven. Roast for about 30 minutes or until you can easily pierce the flesh of the squash. Set aside to cool.
- Divide the crushed gingersnaps and granulated sugar into two bowls and mix well.
- Pour half of the melted butter in each of the bowls and mix with a fork until it resembles wet sand.
- Transfer the cookie mixture to two 9" pie pans. Press the cookie mixture into the pans. Transfer the pie pans to a sheet pan and bake in the preheated oven for 8-10 minutes.
- Scoop the cooled squash flesh from the rind and measure out 15 oz and transfer to a large bowl.
- Pour evaporated milk over the squash. Using and immersion blender, puree the ingredients until they're smooth.
- Whisk together the ginger, cinnamon, sugar, and egg. Add the egg mixture to the squash mixture and whisk until smooth.
- Preheat oven to 425℉.
- Pour the filling in the two baked pie shells, dividing it evenly.
- Bake the pies at 425℉ for 10 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 350℉ for another 20 minutes or until the filling is set and no longer jiggles. Remove from the oven. Transfer to a rack and cool completely.
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