This is absolutely the BEST homemade pumpkin pie recipe! Make it with canned or fresh pumpkin puree and up to several days ahead. Also freezes well! Thanksgiving pie never looked so good or so easy.

Photography Credit: Elise Bauer

The single most requested dessert at our Thanksgiving table is pumpkin pie. (The second being apple pie.)

In fact, pumpkin pie is so synonymous with the holidays that during this time you can find “pumpkin spiced” everything, from lattes to donuts.

Homemade vs Canned Pumpkin Pie

When making a pumpkin pie from scratch, you have a choice. You can either use pumpkin purée from a can, or make your own pumpkin purée by cooking a sugar pumpkin.

Canned pumpkin purée will give you a consistently good result in your pumpkin pie. Making your own purée by roasting a sugar pumpkin (or other flavorful winter squash like kabocha or butternut) can give you a deeper, more interesting flavor.

Which one tastes better? My friend Suzanne and I performed an experiment with her family to find out which pie tasted better, the one with canned pumpkin or the one made with puréed roasted sugar pumpkin.

Each of us received two slices, one from each pie, without knowing which was which. The winner?

The adults clearly preferred the pie made from roasted pumpkin—it had a richer flavor. One child preferred the pie made from the canned purée, the other two had no preference. Needless to say, everyone finished both of their slices, and the whipped cream too!

How to Make Pumpkin Puree from Scratch

To make pumpkin purée from scratch, cut a medium-small sugar pumpkin in half. Scrape out the insides (reserving the pumpkins seeds to roast) and discard. Line a baking sheet with Silpat or foil. Place the pumpkin halves cut side down on the lined baking sheet and bake at 350°F until a fork can easily pierce them, about an hour to an hour and a half. Remove from oven, let cool, scoop out the pulp.

Alternatively, you can cut the pumpkin into sections and steam in a saucepan with a couple inches of water at the bottom, until soft (strain before using). If you want the purée to be extra smooth, press the pulp through a food mill or chinois.

What is Pumpkin Pie Spice?

When people think of Pumpkin Spice, they’re really thinking about the spices in a pumpkin pie, which are cinnamon, ground ginger, nutmeg, and cloves and/or allspice. Cloves and allspice taste a lot alike, so typically you wouldn’t need both of them in your mix.

In our pumpkin pie recipe, we add a small amount of ground cardamom to our pumpkin spice mix. An eighth of a teaspoon isn’t much, but it’s enough to give the pie a sparkle it wouldn’t otherwise have.

Do You Need to Blind Bake the Crust?

No, you don’t need to blind bake the crust for this recipe. Just pour the pumpkin pie filling into an unbaked chilled or frozen pie crust, and bake it in the oven. The crust and the pumpkin filling will cook at the same rate.

How to Tell when Pumpkin Pie is Done

This pie cooks for a little over an hour, first at 425°F and then at 350°F. Reducing the temperature partway though helps the pie cook evenly and with less cracking.

The pie is done when a knife tip inserted in the center comes out wet but relatively clean. The center should be just barely jiggly.

A few cracks are inevitable, but as long as you reduced the temperature partway through cooking and don’t over-bake the pie, you shouldn’t have any major cracks. If you do, the pie will still taste delicious — just cover with whipped cream and no one will be the wiser.

Make Ahead Steps

Pumpkin pie is one of those pies you can easily make a day or two ahead. You can make both the crust and the filling in advance, refrigerate them separately, and then bake them the day of. Or you can make the pie, loosely wrap it in plastic wrap and keep it chilled in the refrigerator for up to two days.

You can even easily freeze pumpkin pie, for storage up to a month. To freeze, let the pie cool completely to room temperature. Then wrap it with a few layers of plastic wrap, and then a layer or two of aluminum foil. Wrap it tightly so that the air touching the pie is minimal.

To defrost, let the pie defrost slowly, for several hours or overnight in the refrigerator.

Want more ideas for Thanksgiving pie?!

More great pumpkin desserts