Sugar High Fridays (SHF) #48 Spice—Pumpkin Chai Tart

It's pumpkin pie season here, and Thanksgiving weekend just ended in Canada. My 9-year old daughter loves pumpkin pie, so, together we spent an afternoon making pie crust and pumpkin pie filling. She's my buddy in the kitchen, always wanting to help stir or break an egg or taste the batter. And she has an amazing set of taste buds that can differentiate the subtleties of bitter or sour, dark chocolates, and Dutch-processed versus natural cocoa powder. She's my taste tester, and I look forward to many more hours spent in the kitchen with her as she grows up.

For this pumpkin pie, I wanted to add a couple of my favorite flavors: chai tea and coconut. Masala chai is a tea that's infused with spices like cinnamon, cardamom, star anise, cloves and ginger. At the grocery store, I found some Maple Sugar made in Quebec so I used it instead of regular sugar. For extra spice, I added some ground ginger to the crust. All these spices and flavors blended nicely with the pumpkin and made a special pie for Thanksgiving.

Playing Around
I bought some wide-mouth canning jars a while ago thinking they were so pretty and hoped to do some canning this year. But, instead of canning, I used the lids as removable bottom tart pans. They worked great. Just make sure you put them on a parchment-lined baking sheet for baking.

Recipe

Makes 8 individual or 1 9-inch tart

Note: The filling makes more than you need for the crust. Either double the crust or half the filling.

Crust:
1 ¼ cups flour
½ teaspoon sugar
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground ginger
3 tablespoons whole milk
1 egg yolk
7 ounces unsalted butter, softened and cut into pieces

Filling:
15 ounces pure pumpkin
1 ¼ cup heavy cream
1/8 cup coconut milk
1 cinnamon stick
5 whole cloves
1-inch piece fresh ginger, grated
1 chai teabag
¾ cup maple sugar (or 1 tablespoon maple syrup plus 11 tablespoons sugar)
¼ teaspoon salt
3 eggs

For the crust: Mound the flour, sugar, salt, and ginger on the counter. Make a well and pour the milk and egg yolk in. Start to mix this up with your fingers. Start adding the butter and work it together until it forms a ball. Gather it into a ball and wrap it in plastic wrap. Chill for 4 hours or up to 2 days before rolling and baking.

Note that this dough is tricky to roll out since there's so much butter in it, but it is so tender and crispy that it's worth the extra effort.

Roll out dough between two sheets of wax paper until 1/8-inch thick. Transfer dough to pie dish. Crimp dough edge decoratively. Chill for 30 minutes before baking.

Preheat oven to 425˚F. Line crust with foil. Fill with pie weights or dried beans. Bake until sides are set, about 20 minutes. Remove foil and weights. Bake until golden brown. Place aluminum foil collar around edge of crust if it browns too quickly, about 15 minutes. Cool completely.

For the filling: Preheat oven to 325˚F. Heat the heavy cream, coconut milk, cinnamon stick, cloves, ginger, and chai teabag until it comes to a boil. Remove from the heat, and stir in the sugar and salt. Let this mixture steep for 5 minutes. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs. Strain the cream mixture into a bowl. Slowly whisk in the eggs, tempering them so that the eggs don't curdle. Pour mixture into cooled crust. Bake until filling is set and knife inserted into center comes out clean, about 1 hour for a 9-inch tart and 30 minutes for individual tarts. Cool to room temperature.

Sugar High Fridays

This is my submission to Sugar High Fridays, a dessert-focused food-blogging event created by Jennifer from The Domestic Goddess. This month's event is hosted by Anita from Dessert First Girl and the theme is spice.