Velvety Pumpkin Tart : ABC November 2012

The bake at Avid Baker's Challenge (ABC) for this month is Velvety Pumpkin Tart, taken from "The Weekend Baker" by Abigail Johnson Dodge. We have one more month to go baking with Abby Dodge before we start with another new cookbook in January 2013.

This pumpkin tart looks perfect except for the little hole somewhere in the centre. I acccidently poked it with a fork when I remove it from the oven, I used a fork to lift the bottom of the pan when taking it out, and careless me poked the tart before I could put the fork down!

Just pretend the hole is not there! 

Like Abby says, this tart is velvety smooth, thanks to the cream cheese in the filling, all 250gm of it! I did a couple of changes to the recipe. This recipe calls for ginger snaps crumbs for the crust, but since I could not find any ginger snap biscuits, I used digestive biscuits, processed them to fine crumbs and added in 1/4 teaspoon of ground ginger, could not taste the ginger at all, should have added more. And I have used two additional tablespoons of melted butter, as I find the original 3 tablespoons is not enough, when mixed with the crumbs, they are still very sandy and dry. The other changes I made is to reduce the sugar from 170gms to 120gms for the filling, which turns out just right.

To make the filling, beat the cream cheese and sugar until creamy and add in the rest of the ingredients, pumpkin puree, eggs, vanilla extract, ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, ground cloves and salt until well mixed. The crust is baked for 10 minutes to brown it a little, the filling is then poured on top and bake for a further 30 minutes. Leave to cool and refrigerate for at least 3 hours before serving.

Another lovely recipe from Abby. 

Please do visit ABC to see the other fellow bakers take on this lovely bread. If you would like to join ABC, please contact Hanaa.