I have no pie DNA in my heritage. Neither of my grandmothers nor my mother baked pies. We went to the Italian bakery in North Beach. For any birthdays or holidays, we had St. Honoré cake, lemon ricotta cheesecake or custardy eclairs. 

It was my oldest sister who one day announced she wanted a pumpkin pie. Really? Okay. Why? 

Regardless, we obeyed. 

Mother bought Libby’s canned pumpkin and a frozen pie shell. We mixed the filling and it smelled wonderful baking on Thanksgiving morning. My sister was thrilled. It was good. 

Another year she made a lemon meringue pie. We were duly impressed. And she learned to make her own crust. And, as it is in families, she was stuck with that job for the next 50 years! 

As a food stylist I learned to make every kind of pie imaginable. And real butter crusts. Cindie came from piemakers, so I learned a ton from her. Velvety chocolate cream, blueberry with a mountain of meringue, pecan with gooey caramel; we made them all for recipe cards or cookbooks. 

They were all delicious. 

Although, to be honest, I can still taste that Libby's canned pumpkin pie and feel content.

So, when I received Kate Mc Dermott’s new book, Pie Camp, I was thrilled to find a heritage pumpkin pie recipe. If you want, you can use canned pumpkin. The recipe is below. I’m making it for my husband in November. I can tell it’ll be delicious. Kate also has a homemade butter crust video that has been viewed by over 100,000 cooks. If you don’t want to use all butter, I make the Crisco and butter crust in my food processor and it’s delicious, pliable and foolproof. You get the best properties of butter and shortening in this easy crust.  

If you don’t know already know this, Kate is a pie master. This is not her first pie cookbook!

Please listen to Kate’s episode on our WBACA podcast. She has life lessons as well as pie lessons to share!