With a traditional pumpkin pie filling and a spooky and festive crust, this easy pumpkin pie will be the hit of your next Halloween party!
Making Halloween Pumpkin Pie
This is such a fun and simple pie for Halloween! It uses activated charcoal to make the pie dough black. The activated charcoal tastes just like regular crust, although a little denser. You can check out the full black pie dough recipe. Once you're ready to make the pie you can roll out the dough as any normal pie crust:
Then, you place it in your pie pan. I use the method of rolling the dough over the rolling pin to place it in your pie dish as show in my sweet tart dough recipe. Then you can trim the excess and shape the edges. For this halloween themed pie I did spikes but you can do whatever you wish. Then, blind bake the pie crust by putting down tin foil on top of the crust and filling the pie with beans or pie weights. While it's baking, you can make the filling. It's so easy, you put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix with a fork or whisk until thoroughly combined.
Once the pie crust comes out of the oven, you'll remove the pie weights and bake a few more minutes. Then, you’ll remove the crust again and while the pie crust is still hot add the filling and carefully place the pie back in the oven. It's best to keep the pie on a baking sheet so it's easy to move around. Pumpkin pie is similar to a custard pie or a cheesecake in that you want to make sure not to overcook it. It will still taste good, but might get a crack on the top or cave in while it cools. You want to remove it when the middle is still pretty jiggly.
Halloween Pie Dough Cut Outs
If you're making cut outs to top the pie, it's good time to cut them out while the pie is baking. You can keep them on the a cookie sheet in the fridge while the pie cooks. I made a haunted house with some bats, but you can use any fun cut outs you want. Making a double crust will give you a lot of extra dough, even with making cut outs. You can use the extra for mini tarts or save it for your next charcoal pie.
Once the pie is out of the oven let it cool until room temperature. While it's cooling you can bake the cut outs. Once the pie is completely cool you can place the cut outs on the pie and serve. It’s that easy!
Please note, while activated charcoal is generally considered safe, it can interfere with certain medication so check with your physician if you're taking any prescriptions. You can read more about it here.
Halloween Pumpkin Pie
INGREDIENTS
Filling:
- 1 15 oz can pumpkin puree
- 1 12 oz can evaporated milk
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- ½ cup brown sugar
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp ginger
- ¼ tsp nutmeg
- ¼ tsp allspice
- 3 eggs
Instructions
Filling
- Using a fork or whisk, mix all ingredients in a large bowl until combined
Assembly
- Preheat the oven to 425 °F
- Roll out one disk of pie dough into a 9 in pie pan
- Place the pie on a backing sheet so it’s easy to move around. Place a large sheet of aluminum foil in the over the pie crust and fill with pie weights or dried beans. You’ll want to make sure the piece of foil is larger than the pie pan so you can easily lift the edges when it’s time to remove the weights.
- Bake for 12 minutes. Now is a good time to make the filling by mixing all the filling ingredients in a bowl.
- Remove the pie crust from oven and carefully remove the foil with the beans. The easiest way is to pull the sides of foil towards the middle and lift up.
- Place the pie crust back in oven and bake for another 5 minutes.
- Remove from oven. While still hot, pour the pumpkin pie filling into the pie pan.
- Place back in the oven and bake at 425 for 15 minutes.
- After 15 minutes, lower the temp to 350 and bake for another 25 - 30 minutes.
- The pie should still be very wobbly in the middle when you remove it. It will firm up while it cools.
- Let sit until completely cool.
- Optional: While it cools you can bake any decorative pie crust cut outs with the extra pie dough. Depending on the size you can bake for 12-15 minutes at 350 degrees.
- Once completely cool, decorate with the cut outs by placing them directly on the pie.
Nicole White says
I absolutely love this pie and your tutorial! I have included it in my round up of Halloween desserts! Thank you so much for allowing me to share!!
Sophia says
Thanks Nicole, so glad you like it and have shared!!