Preheat oven to 375°F.

Cut each pumpkin into 6 to 8 wedges. Scrape the seeds and stringy stuff out. Save the seeds to toast if you want, or compost/dispose of it. Don’t bother being too meticulous cleaning out the stringy inside. Once you roast the pumpkin, it scrapes out easily.

Brush the pumpkin flesh with butter. Place each wedge on its side in a large roasting pan and cover the roasting pan tightly with aluminum foil.

Bake for an hour and then turn the wedges onto their other side and roast for another hour or until the flesh is very tender when stuck with a fork.

Cut off any burnt bits and scoop out the flesh into a food processor.

Puree the pulp until smooth. Transfer pumpkin pureee to a sieve or colander lined with several pieces of cheesecloth set over a large bowl. Cover the top with plastic wrap and let drain 8 hours or overnight.

Note 1. Be sure to use a small sugar pie pumpkin NOT a large pumpkin you would buy for a jack-o-lantern. The large ones are pretty to look at but flavorless and stringy.

Note 2. Step 6 is done to let the pumpkin puree thicken as there is a lot of moisture in the initial puree. If you are in a hurry, you can skip this step and instead line a baking sheet with three layers of paper towels. Put the puree on the paper towels and pat the pumpkin puree down, absorbing the moisture. You can flip the pumpkin back and forth with the paper towel, until the paper towel is completely saturated. Your pumpkin puree is ready to use.

Note 3. Pumpkin puree is pretty easy to make in bulk, so feel free to double or triple this recipe. The puree keeps for a couple days in the fridge or freezes in a ziplock bag/airtight container for up to two months.

In a food processor combine the flour, sugar (you might want to initially crumble the sugar around, as it will stick together), and salt. Pulse three or four times to combine.

Cut the butter into ½” cubes and sprinkle around the flour mixture in the processor. Pulse 10-12 times to get butter the size of peas.

Mix the water and sour cream together with a fork until smooth. Pour half into the processor and pulse three or four times. Add the rest of the mixture and pulse again three or four times.

Check the dough. If it’s not coming together and is dry, add a tablespoon or two of water. You want to make sure the dough comes together as you pinch it with your fingers.

Divide the dough and then flatten them into disks. Wrap with plastic wrap and put them in the fridge to rest for an hour or overnight. Before using, take out of the fridge and let it sit at room temperature for 5 minutes for easier workability.

Note 1. Why the sour cream? An all-butter crust has a habit of becoming heavy and greasy. The extra fat and acidity of the sour cream helps keep the crust tender.

Note. 2. You can easily make this crust dough overnight or freeze it.

Preheat the oven to 375°F.

Roll out the dough for a deep dish 9” pie pan of your choice. Fit the dough into the pan and decoratively flute the edge of the pan however you want. Prick the bottom of the dough with a fork all over.

Fit a piece of parchment paper or aluminum foil over the dough and pour some pie weights (or dry rice or dry beans) into the paper/foil. This will weigh it down as you prebake the crust. This is called “blind baking.”

Bake for 12 minutes. Remove from oven and lift the paper/foil gently directly up from the pie crust very carefully. Put the paper/foil filled with the pie weights in a bowl and put the pie crust back in the oven for another 5 minutes or until the crust starts to look dry.

Once the pie crust is out of the oven, take the maple syrup and gently boil it in a heavy saucepan. Bring the maple syrup to 240°F (the soft ball stage – when a small amount of syrup dropped into a bowl of cold water forms a soft ball). Put aside to cool a little bit.

In a bowl whisk together the pumpkin puree, all the spices, salt, cream, milk and eggs. Then whisk in the maple syrup.

Pour the custard into the pie crust shell. Bake the pie in the middle of the oven for 50 minutes or until the filling is set but still shakes slightly. It’ll set as it cools. Cool on a rack to completion.

Note 1. Maple syrup in the US is broken down into Grade A and Grade B, with Grade A being further broken down into Light Amber (sometimes called Fancy), Medium Amber and Dark Amber. Grade B maple syrup is darker than the Grade A Dark Amber syrup. It has a more distinct, stronger maple flavor. You can find it at specialty stores or places like Trader Joe’s.

Note 2. If you are using a regular 9” pie pan not a deep dish pie pan, you can probably cut the custard recipe in half and have enough filling for it. Bake the pie for 30-35 minutes.

Note 3. If you have left over pie crust dough, gather it up and roll out it out again and use a cookie cutter in the shape of a maple leaf to cut little maple leaves to decorate the pie. Brush the maple leaf with an egg wash of 1 egg yolk and 1 Tbsp of water whisked together. Then sprinkle the leaves with maple sugar if you have it, or turbinado sugar. Bake with the pie crust when you are blind baking. Take them out at the 12 minutes mark. Garnish the pie with the pastry leaves just before serving. Just as an FYI, this also is useful if your pie custard happens to crack and you need something to cover it up!

Note 4. If you must use the canned stuff (yeah, go ahead, I won’t tell) use the trick that I gave about taking some moisture out of the puree by rolling it around on the paper towels. The less water in the pumpkin puree, the more concentrated the pumpkin flavor.