I’ll be honest with you, Im not the perfect baker. I have one big fault when it comes to cooking and baking, some might see it as a blessing though. I cannot follow a recipe to save my life. Seriously. The few times I have tried, I have been hugely disappointed with the results. When I look at a recipe, any recipe, in my eyes, its not complete. I always see things I can change. Things I can add. Things I can remove. Its a curse. I mean, I love being able to create and edit recipes in my head, but at the same time, it can be frustrating. Sometimes Ill look at a recipe and know it needs something, but it wont come to me right away. Sometimes it takes a few tries before I find the perfect combination. Usually, though, I can improvise a recipe on the first try, which is a life saver. I can look in my cabinets and in my fridge and just throw an amazing dinner together. My fiance can tell me something he wants to eat and I can create a recipe around that. I can read a dozen different recipes for a meal or a dessert, take out the pieces I like from each, and then create something absolutely sensational. Or, at least, I like to think it is. Ive never had any complaints. 

This year, my fiance and I threw our first family and friends Thanksgiving at our new home. Now, when it comes to Thanksgiving, my baby brother has one responsibility- to get the pies. See, back in the day, my mom would make the most amazing homemade pies. Pumpkin. Peach. Apple. You name it, she could create it. And its where I got my love of baking from. (Though my love of cooking comes from my father.) Anyway, without my mother attending Thanksgiving anymore, it became my brother’s responsibility to obtain one of the most important parts of the meal, the pumpkin pie. (And another pie of his choice.) The last couple years he’s been able to succeed at this task, though usually he waits until the last minute, leaving us all wondering if there will be any pie at all. But there have been plenty of times my sister and I have had to bail him out. Now when I say obtain pies, I don’t mean baking them. My brother cant even make a grilled cheese sandwich without burning it. (He says thats the special touch.) But all he’s required to do is order the pies from a local restaurant, or even get them from the grocery store. Sad, isn’t it? We resort to frozen, but preferably fresh, pies from the grocery store.

For this Thanksgiving, I decided we needed to try something different. I decided we needed a homemade pumpkin pie. To be truthful though, I’ve never made a pumpkin pie in my life. Ive made pumpkin bread, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin cheesecake. How hard could a pumpkin pie be? And to be truthful again, it actually wasn’t that hard. I scoured the internet reading review after review of pumpkin pies. I finally found one that seemed like a winner in my eyes. I could almost taste it by reading the recipe. It wasn’t complete and it wasn’t perfect though. It, like almost every other recipe I find, needed work. And though it didnt turn out that bad, and I got some compliments on it, it still wasn’t perfect. I knew I was going to be short on time that day so I cheated. I used a graham cracker crust. Shame on me! And I paid for it. It burned. The flavor of the pie was good though. But again, not perfect. It needed some tinkering.

And that takes us to today. Today I attempted my altered pumpkin pie recipe again. Success. I made the most delicious pumpkin pie. Within 30 minutes, over half the pie was gone.

This will now be the official family pumpkin pie recipe. I already cant wait for the next Thanksgiving.