Vegan pumpkin pie

I had trouble with my pie crust this morning - I used a random recipe that I found online and the proportions were all wrong.  It called for 3 cups of whole wheat flour, 1 teaspoon salt, 3/4 cup margarine and 5-6 tablespoons cold water.  I mixed the first three ingredients (using my brand new pastry blender from Williams Sonoma, which is awesome and only 10 bucks), then added water, water and more water, and it still wouldn't hold together.  I then looked at my tried-and-true pie crust recipe (why I didn't use that in the first place I really don't know) and saw that there needed to be either less flour or more margarine.  So I added some more margarine and it still wouldn't hold together, so I decided to just press it into the pan like a graham cracker crust.  It worked out okay, but was a little too thick for my taste.  But I did manage to do my first sort-of fluted pie crust edge, which looks pretty good.

Then I assembled my ingredients for the pie filling and discovered that my newish jar of applesauce that had been in the fridge for a little while had somehow grown some mold - blech.  No worry - I peeled and chopped a Granny Smith apple, cooked it in a little water with some sugar for 10 minutes, then pureed it in my food processor.  Voila - applesauce!  It was pretty good, and super easy.

So here's what I did after I finally finished making the pie crust and the applesauce.  I'm really pleased with the result - my in-house photographer and I each just had a big slice and it was delicious!

Preheat oven to 425.

Combine:

   3/4 cup vegan sugar
   1/2 teaspoon salt
   1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger
   2 teaspoons cinnamon
   1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
   15-ounce can pumpkin puree
   2 teaspoons applesauce
   1 cup soymilk

Whisk until the mixture has thickened a bit, then pour into the pie crust.  Bake for 15 minutes.  Then reduce oven temperature to 350 and bake for 40-50 minutes. Cool in refrigerator for about an hour then serve.