Pie #19: Cat-O'-Lantern Pie (Pumpkin Mousse Pie)

Fall is here.  Leaves are falling, fall flavors have hit the menus, and I need my mittens while I wait for the bus.  To celebrate, Perry and our friend Micah decided they wanted to have a fall party.  We ate delicious vegetable chili, drank freshly pressed and mulled apple cider, carved pumpkins (note Micah's fierce cat and Perry's shooting star!), and watched our toddler friend play with Ariel and Micah's black cat.  To top off the evening Ariel and Micah made pumpkin dessert - it was so delicious I decided to make it into a pie.

 The recipe this week originated from Kraft's website.




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Pumpkin Mousse Pie

Ingredients:

crust:
2 cups crushed Gingersnap Cookies
2.5 T butter, melted
2 T sugar

filling:
1 cup cold milk

1 can (15 oz.) pumpkin

2 pkg. (3.4 oz. each) JELL-O Vanilla Flavor Instant Pudding

3/4 t. ground cinnamon

1/8 t. ground ginger

1/8 t. ground nutmeg

1/8 t. ground allspice

2 cups thawed COOL WHIP Whipped Topping

topping:

1/2 c. heavy (whipping) cream, chilled

2 t. sugar
1/4 t. vanilla extract

Pie Algorithm:

1. Crust: Mix 3 crust ingredients.  Press into 9in pie pan.  Bake for 5 min at 325F.  Let cool.

2. Filling: Beat first 4 filling ingredients in a large bowl with whisk 2 min.  (Mixture will be thick.)  Stir in COOL WHIP.  Place in cooled pie shell.  Refrigerate 4 hours.

3. Topping: Whip 3 topping ingredients until stiff peaks form.  Spoon onto pie. 

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This is another tasty pie week.  The recipe is easy to make and has the familiar flavor of pumpkin pie - it just has a different texture.  The pie is also easily altered; you could try a graham cracker or vanilla wafer crust, or a pecan praline topping instead of the gingersnap crust and whipped topping suggested above.  With all this talk about altering the recipe, I actually need to confess.  I made this pie to take to our Fall Potluck at church, and accidentally forgot to mix in the cool whip and ended up with pumpkin pudding pie instead of pumpkin mousse pie.  Of course I remembered this step just after I had smoothed out all the pumpkin in the crust - one step too late to do anything about it.  Even with this little problem I left church with an empty tin and the compliment of my friends Grace and Matthew!  As the picture shows, there was plenty of extra filling without the cool whip.  The extra filling could be put into a second pie or could be put into small dessert glasses.