That pie looks awesome! I may have to give it a try on a regular day. In the past I have made pumpkin custard with sugar free pudding mix... It was like kissing your brother thru a screen door! Boring! It will be nice to get back to eggs and cream or creamcheese. And the nut crust is a stroke of genius! I've had it with cheesecake before but it never occurred to me to use it with pumpkin pie.
If I may offer some alternatives to the recipe that may help with firmness, if you put about
1/4 cup of raw oatmeal into the blender and chop it on high you will yield oat flour. Adding this to the crust recipe will make it easier to handle and also give the butter and nut fats something to hold on to. I would also add about
a tablespoon of ice water after the nuts, butter and oat flour and sugar have been blended together. The water will make the crust more tender. I would also recommend baking the crust in the pan by itself at 350ยบ for about
10-12 minutes while you mix up the pumpkin mixture. Not only will this give the crust a better texture, it will give the custard a warm 'bed' to start cooking in right away and help prevent that soggy bottom crust that so often happens.
One thing I do for Thanksgiving and other holidays is to cook 'regular' for my family and myself. I use flour in the gravy, make mashed potatoes and stuffing and put brown sugar on the sweet potatoes. I have found in the past that if I don't do this once or twice a year I start to feel like a martyr and when it's time to bake Christmas
cookies with the grandkids I go bonkers! I let the traditional holiday treats happen because that's what they are, treats. And after that carb laden meal, when I feel drowsy and blah, and in the days after when my arthritis escalates from the way my carbs affect my inflammation levels I remember why I eat the way I do as a diabetic and it's easier to stay on track.
I also take a tablespoon of psyllium fiber (metamucil) in a glass of warm water after the holiday meal to even out my post meal spikes. I learned about
this when I was part of a study group at Michigan State University for Kelloggs. We ate high carb meals which also contained psyllium and they tracked our blood sugar for four hours after each meal. We also ate identical control meals without the psyllium. At the end of the study we were told that it had been shown that psyllium taken with or immediately after a meal would mechanically slow the postprandial spike and
may inhibit the absorption of some carbs because of the way it moves food thru the GI tract at a faster pace. They didn't give us a license to eat anything we wanted, just gave us an alternative to suffering through that big spike after an indulgence. Some peeps get bloating and gas from psyllium, but then some peeps get that from baked beans!!!
Hope this helps someone.