Pumpkin Crisp

Perfect Pairing:  Whipped Cream

You know it is the fall season when all of the cooking blogs forget about heirloom tomatoes and focus all of their attention on pumpkin, apples, and soup.  Food people get really excited about the fall season.  The first crisp breeze in the air makes everyone stock up on canned pumpkin.  Oh man, remember when there was a shortage a few years ago?  Food blogger fall nightmare is what that was.

I had that familiar urge to bake something pumpkin-y right on time.  One of my favorite fall desserts is a pumpkin crunch cake that uses a yellow cake mix and lots of butter.  It is so crazy good.  I wanted to do something like that but maybe a bit healthier, so I came up with this Pumpkin Crisp.  I didn’t remember ever seeing anything like it but thought why wouldn’t that work??  The base is basically a pumpkin pie without the crust, and the topping is very similar to what I use on apple crisps. 

I was so pleased with the result!  It was delicious, the perfect fall dessert.  I am not claiming this is health food, but nutritionally it could be a lot worse.  

I par baked the base so that the yummy topping didn’t sink.  I used pecans in the crumble topping but walnuts would be great as well.

You have to top something like this with a little whipped cream.  I didn’t want to make homemade whipped cream (NOT health food) so I went the convenient route. 

First I had good ol’ Cool Whip in the cart.  Then I looked at the ingredient list and just couldn’t do it.  The first ingredient was water, but that was followed by hydrogenated vegetable oil, high fructose corn syrup, and then regular corn syrup.  I decided to go with the slightly better (still not healthy) Reddi Wip since I was just more comfortable with the ingredient list. 

One year ago on Perfecting the Pairing - Candy Corn Mix

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Click "Read more" for the recipe....


Pumpkin Crisp



Lindsay at Perfecting the Pairing

Printable Recipe


Ingredients:

BASE

·        2 eggs

·        ¾ cup sugar

·        ½ tsp salt

·        ½ tsp vanilla

·        ¾ tsp pumpkin pie spice

·        1 can (15 oz) 100% pure pumpkin

·        1 can (12 oz) evaporated milk

TOPPING

·        ½ cup flour

·        1 cup old fashioned oats

·        ½ cup brown sugar

·        ½ tsp pumpkin pie spice

·        ¾ tsp cinnamon

·        1 pinch salt

·        ½ cup chopped pecans

·        5 Tb butter, melted. 

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degress F.  Grease an 11 x 7 inch pan with cooking spray, set aside.

Crack the eggs into a large bowl and whisk.  Add the sugar, salt, vanilla, and ¾ teaspoon pumpkin pie spice, whisk to combine.  Add the pumpkin and evaporated milk.  Whisk until smooth and evenly combined.  Pour into the baking dish and bake for 25 minutes.

While the base is cooking mix the flour, oats, brown sugar, ½ teaspoon pumpkin pie spice, cinnamon, salt, and chopped pecans.  Right before you take the base out of the oven stir the melted butter into the oat and nut mixture.  Stir gently until the butter is distributed.  Take the base out of the oven and sprinkle the topping evenly across the top.  Place back into the oven and bake for an additional 22-28 minutes, until the base is set and the top is toasted.

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