To celebrate my 400th entry on Bacon Unwrapped, I decided to bake a pie.
Yes, you read that correctly. I have now written about bacon 400 times in the last 2.5 years of my life. And while not every entry has involved me eating bacon, I’m guessing at least half of them have (rub defibrillator paddles together…press against chest…clear!).
Don’t worry kiddies, because I’m not even close to being finished! I’m just getting warmed up! Plenty more bacon still to come!
So back this pie thing…I baked a pumpkin pie. But when I bake a pumpkin pie, of course it’s not going to be your run-of-the-mill pumpkin pie. Shockingly, I added bacon.
I originally got the idea to do this from Matt, who pointed me to this article about a bacon pumpkin pie someone else had made. While interesting, and I certainly applaud their efforts, that pie calls for whole strips of bacon to be baked into the pie. But my style of making bacon-blessed desserts is more along the lines of “chop the bacon and mix it into the dessert” rather than “put whole strips of bacon in the dessert.” I also didn’t want to go to the effort of finding and cooking an actual pumpkin, so I went in search of a recipe that uses canned pumpkin instead. Because yeah, I’m lazy like that.
I also had grand plans of making this pie over the holidays, but I was so busy with life over Thanksgiving that the holiday came and went before I even had a chance to think about pumpkin pie. I have no excuse for not doing it over Christmas because I spent an entire week at my cabin in Idaho doing nothing but skiing, snowshoeing, playing Wii with my cousins, sipping cocktails, and laying around. But, you know, that whole lazy thing. And it really was a glorious five days of utter laziness.
Another problem I have occasionally is procrastination. So of course I waited for a day when I had a lot other stuff I should have been doing…which made it the perfect day to make bacon pumpkin pie!
Since I was using Libby’s pumpkin-in-a-can, I decided to just go ahead and use the recipe for Libby’s Famous Pumpkin Pie – it’s on the back of the can and it’s very easy to make. For the pie crust, I was also too lazy to make my own, so I used a frozen Marie Callender’s pie crust that I got from the grocery store (which I kind of regret because I had some issues with it, but I’ll come back to that later).
For the bacon portion of the event, I fried 10 slices which I then chopped into tiny bits in a food processor. I mixed the chopped bacon in with the pie mixture before pouring it into the pie crust.
Following Libby’s instructions, I baked the pie at 425 degrees for 12 minutes, and then for another 45 minutes at 350 degrees. Then I continued to follow Libby’s strict orders of letting it cool for 2 hours (OK, I lie, because it was actually closer to 1.5 hours – I was meeting friends for happy hour, and happy hour just couldn’t wait).
By the way, back to that whole Marie Callender’s pie crust debacle, all I will say is…
…here’s the side of the pie with a crust that looks (sort of) how a pie crust should look.
And this side of the pie? Not so much.
I’m sure there was some sort of user error involved, although I swear I followed the instructions. But this particular pie crust really was a pain to work with. Next time I’ll just suck it up and make my own.
“So enough with the commentary, how did the pie taste?!?”
I’ve gotta be honest here – it was really, really tasty. The result was this incredible balance of salty and sweet flavors. I’ve had bacon desserts before that I thought were pretty good, but most of the time one serving of the bacon dessert is enough. But with this pie, I could literally go sit at my kitchen counter right now and eat a entire bacon pumpkin pie.
Can you see all the lovely little bacon bits tucked in there amongst the pumpkin? That is goodness, my friends.
I’m really shocked at how much I enjoyed this pie. I was luke warm about the kind of bacon I used for it, but it really came through for me in the end. And I was skeptical of how the bacon and pumpkin flavors would mix together, so I was very pleasantly surprised by the result.
And I’m not the only one to give the bacon pumpkin pie a positive review. I got a second opinion just to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind, and my friend Carole had the same positive reaction. And this was before we even had our first cocktail at happy hour! I didn’t tell her what was in the pie before asking her to try it. She correctly guessed it had bacon in it, although she mistook the pumpkin for sweet potatoes initially. But she also immediately gave the pie two thumbs up.
I’m telling you – sneak this pie in for Thanksgiving dessert next year rather than a regular pumpkin pie. Don’t tell anyone in advance what you’re doing. And I guarantee you’ll have converted a whole new group of people into believers in the deliciousness that is a bacon-blessed dessert.