Whiskey for my pie, beer for my horses

I don’t know if Toby Keith would have liked my lyrics, but I think he’d like my pie. I was raised on pumpkin pie with whiskey. My grandma, Mayo, baked it for as long as I can remember. When she was too old to bake, mom took over the task. After mom died, I carried on the tradition.

I’ve never tasted pumpkin pie like this except mine. I rarely ate it out, but was surprised when I finally did to discover that most pumpkin pies are really sweet. I’ve introduced this to friends and colleagues over the years – some liked it, others didn’t. But to me it is pumpkin pie. Both my dad and Aunt Irene always looked forward to my pumpkin pie. They liked my cherry pie, but they always requested the pumpkin.

The only changes I made from Mayo’s original recipe were decreasing the salt to ¼ teaspoon, increasing the whiskey to ½ cup, and decreasing the milk to ½ cup. The original recipe called for ¾ cup milk and ¼ cup of whiskey which I’d probably recommend you start with if you aren’t use to the taste of whiskey in your pie. However, if you want to leave out the whiskey, just use one cup of milk instead. We try to avoid dairy so we now use unsweetened plain almond milk in every recipe that calls for milk. However, feel free to use skim or regular milk.