Pastry crocodiles on pumpkin pie

Recently Ida and I made an apple pie…actually it’s something we’ve cooked quite often, after all it is apple season and we are rich in windfalls. We did a post about one with pictures along the way. During the process pastry crocodiles were made and devoured before I could record them for posterity. Which is a shame…because they were rather scrumptious…

Some lovely fellow bloggers, Rachel from Growing Things and Making Things and Sharyn from The Kale Chronicles mentioned it was a shame not to see them and since then I’ve been thinking of making a pumpkin pie topped with some.

I’m not sure why exactly – they just seemed to go together….

Well yesterday we finally got around to it and I remembered the camera at crucial points. Most of the pictures look very familiar as most as the process was the same as the applepie but I was particularly charmed by Ida’s firm grasp on the process. She actually remembered independently most of the stages which leads me to dream about sending her into the kitchen to whip up a pie while I have a little lie down and read or something else equally indulgent. (Exploitation? How dare you…)

We also wilfully ignored any other recipe and it turned out exactly as I hoped, deliciously spicy and toffeeish so I’m going to give you the recipe (ha! there’s no measurements so I suppose method would be less misleading…)

First off, it was a butternut squash, not a pumpkin. Ho hum. I was going to steam it but I wanted that slight caramel flavour you get at the edges of roasted veg so diced and slung in the oven.

I then pureed the bits with one of those hand-held blenders. It did make a very smooth purée but next time I may try just mashing them with a fork. 

We added, I think amounts really depend on the amount of purée you have, so add to taste;

ground ginger.

cinnamon.

ground mixed spice.

nutmeg.

sugar, I used molasses sugar which really added to the lovely toffeeish flavour.

a splash of  double cream.

We used my old shallow enamel dish so it was a shallow pie. Ida set to work buttering it.

We used short crust pastry and rolled out a disc for the bottom and smoothed it in.

Then filled it with the squash purée.

Then there was a lot of pleasurable flouring, rolling and crocodile cutting and shaping. This bit went on for a while…

and here they are

Ta da!

Then liberally brush with beaten egg,

 and finally and triumphantly –

Once again I meant to take a picture of a slice but we were all too busy eating and elbowing each other out of the way for seconds. Perfect autumn comfort eating.