Bourbon Pumpkin Pie

I LOVE this recipe and so does my family. I do add about 1/2 cup of the bourbon. It cuts the sweetness of the pie!

This was a huge hit at our Thanksgiving meal. I used Tate's gluten free ginger cookies that also have candied ginger in them. I also replaced all the diary with full fat coconut milk (in the can - but not coco lopez). No one knew the difference at all - either that it was missing gluten or dairy. I made it in a spring form pan so it looked really nice when I took the side ring off. I was careful with baking the crust so I didn't have the problem with burning. However there is a lot of butter in the crust so if you use a spring form or tart pan (another pretty look) be sure to put it on a cookie sheet or you will end up with a mess - butter dripping all over the bottom of your oven. Really delicious and not at all difficult.

Several lessons learned with this one:

1. Even with a collar, the crumbs on the top burned. I ended up cutting off all the burned crumbs, leaving a somewhat unattractive very dark rim of crumbs peeking above the filling. Looking more closely at the photo, I see that seems to have happened with the pie shown above, as well. Perhaps one could add an egg white to firm up the crumbs and blind bake it with a collar for a much shorter time.

2. Using gingersnaps significantly affects the spice flavor profile (skewing heavily toward ginger, of course), so people who prefer a "traditional" pie will notice; they could very well ask you just to use a standard pie crust instead, or at least one not made with gingersnaps. One could also use a hard vanilla cookie (Annie's and Trader Joe's make them in animal shapes), which is most likely what I would do if making this again.

3. I used coconut milk - the thick stuff on top, after refrigerating -- and no dairy; the spices were so bold I could not discern any coconut flavor.

4. The pie tasted much better two or three days later.
;o)

To follow up...the pie turned out great and everyone loved it. I made another batch of filling today so that I could use up the extra crust crumbs in mini pies :)

Used a 9-1/2" deep-dish pyrex pan, an 8-ounce box of GF gingersnaps (more like 2 cups) and kept the 6T of butter. Worked well. Used 1/2 & 1/2 instead of cream. One sugar pumpkin yielded enough puree for two pies. This was a huge hit at Thanksgiving dinner.

I had the same experience as Jenn...6 TB butter is way too much. I ended up with ginger snap soup in the oven! I suspect 2-3 TB is plenty for that amount of ginger snap crumbs. 6TB is more appropriate for an entire box of cookies. Luckily I still had the other half box of cookies to grind up and add in to save my sanity on Thanksgiving morning.

what an incredible recipe! this was a major hit last night with my family. the bourbon really enhancted the flavor of the pumpkin and spices.

UPDATE The filling is delicious.. could not wait til after dinner to try :)

I attempted this, but used homemade brown sugar shortbread cookies for crust - against my better judgment, I used the 6 tbs of melted butter in crust.. it was way too wet - and was impossible to bake - I added foil and a weights to try to press it back out and up the sides.. so I had to start over - I used store bought shortbread cookies and ground pecans, with just 2 tbs of butter - crust came out great - filling looks and smells delicious - will update after tasting. I think the amount of butter is too much - no matter what type of cookie is being used - unless gluten free gingersnaps react differently.

This looks fantastic!

This looks delish! What would be a good dairy-free substitution for heavy cream? My husband is lactose-intolerant. I can find lactose-free sour cream but there is no lactose free heavy cream. Can I substitute full fat coconut milk for heavy cream? Is there any other suggestions for the substitution? Thanks in advance.