Praline Pecan Pretzel Pumpkin Pie

Pumpkin pies always call for a lot of eggs. There are recipes for pumpkin pies made with tofu, but David would never eat tofu for dessert (and he always asks what’s in my cooking), and there is no way I could eat a whole pie myself without gaining 10 pounds, which is kind of the opposite of what I’m trying to do right now. After seeing a recipe for a frozen pumpkin pie, I decided that’s what I would make. With a few twists, of course. [wink!]

Thanksgiving is about food and football. My favorite football-watching snack is pretzels. To be honest, I don’t care much for football, but I’m nuts about pretzels. Goodbye graham cracker crust, hello pretzel crust. I’m also nuts about, well, nuts, so I subbed out half of the ice cream that the original called for with butter pecan. Vegan ice cream, meaning that there’s probably more soy in this pie than had I baked a tofu pumpkin pie. Shhh… don’t tell David.

Crust* (inspired by this crust):

• 1 1/2 cups finely-crushed pretzels
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup non-hydrogenated soy margarine or butter, melted

Filling (inspired by this filling):

• 1 cup pumpkin
• 1 pint pecan ice cream (or soy ice cream), softened
• 1 pint vanilla ice cream (or soy ice cream), softened
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg

1. Combine ingredients for crust and press into a pie plate. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
2. Combine filling ingredients in a medium bowl; spread into pie crust and freeze at least 3 hours.

*You will have much more crust left over than fits into the plate. At first I thought I had read the recipe wrong, and that it called for 1 1/2 cups of pretzels, crushed. So, after making the first crust, I ground 1 1/2 cups of pretzels into fine crumbs, added 1/2 cup melted margarine and 1 cup brown sugar (because I ran out of granulated sugar). This left a soupy buttery mess that reminded me of cookie batter. So, I made cookies with it. That recipe is a work in progress.