Crustless Pumpkin Pie, Again

This crustless pumpkin pie was one of the first recipes I posted when I started my blog.  You can read about my adventures making a version modified for food allergies from this past January.  I still totally love it and can't believe I waited this long into fall before making it.  I made this for Thanksgiving mainly because I had two partial containers of Cool Whip in the freezer that I felt needed to be dealt with since both freezers are sooooo full.  Unfortunately we only used one container for this, so I need to make another batch.  Darn!  :)  

This time I jazzed up the flavor of the crumbly topping by adding ground ginger cookies and leaving out the mild oats and the extra sugar.

Inspiration

Alida's Kitchen crustless pumpkin pie 

If you want to make this gluten-free, substitute gluten-free cookies for the ginger cookies and wheat germ and use all flax seed meal in the filling instead of flour.  You could try making it dairy-free by substituting oil for butter in the topping and use coconut milk instead of the evaporated milk.  

Ingredients

I cut this into 16 pieces

Topping

• 6 trader Joe's Ginger thin cookies, ground (or graham crackers would work too)
• 2T chopped almonds, slightly ground (threw them in with the cookies in the chopper cup of my immersion blender and chopped them a bit)
• 1 T wheat germ (I used the 'honey crunch' flavor. This is totally optional, you could skip it and use more cookies and almonds)
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1T butter, melted (I throw the butter in with the rest of the topping ingredients and melt it the microwave)

Ingredients lineup

Filling

• 15 oz can pumpkin purée (not pie filling)
• 12 oz evaporated fat-free/skim milk
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1/4 cup flax seed meal (or another 1/4 cup flour)
• 3/4 tsp baking powder 
• 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon (I substituted Penzey's baking spice)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract (I used vanilla paste since I've got a little jar and I don't know what else to do with it.  Use it as an exact replacement for vanilla extract.)

Directions

Mix the topping ingredients and set aside.

crumbly topping

Spray an 8x8 glass baking dish, preferably one with a rubber lid so you can easily save the leftovers in the fridge.  Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Pudding-y filling ingredients blended together.

Mix the filling ingredients.  Pour into the prepared pan and sprinkle the topping on.

raw, ready to go in the oven

Bake for 50-55 minutes or until no longer jiggly in the center.

fresh out of the oven

I cut mine into 16 pieces.  Serve with a hearty dollop of whipped topping.  

Verdict

Yes, it's still great!

The only thing I would change is to maybe add a little more sugar in the filling since it seemed like it could be touch sweeter and possibly a 1/4 teaspoon of salt to bring out the pumpkin flavor.   But otherwise it confirmed that I'm still in love with this crustless pumpkin pie. 

Last year Sonny D totally loved this pumpkin pie but this year he says he wants a piece but then doesn't eat it.  Ugg, toddlers. Then I'm *forced* to finish his serving... after eating two of my own servings.  :)  Husband Jeff had some too, but I ate most of it. 

Oh, and I found that I totally prefer Cool Whip on my pumpkin pie rather than spray whipped cream in a can.  We ran out of Cool Whip on the last couple of slices so we grabbed the spray whipped cream and found it thin and not sweet enough.