cream cheese pumpkin pie

We made these 2 pumpkin recipes recently because we were trying to use up the pumpkin in our freezer. This was a new recipe that we found online, but Adam made it so it doesn't count for me. We were getting bored (there's that bored again) with our standard pumpkin pie recipe, and this is the 2nd one we tried. The first one, which we did at Christmas, was a sort of custard rather than the more solid pumpkin filling, but we were indifferent about it. This one, we liked a lot better.

9 inch pie crust

CREAM CHEESE BASE
8 oz. cream cheese
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg

Beat cream cheese until smooth. Beat in other ingredients until light and smooth. Chill mixture for 30 minutes, then smooth into bottom of the pie crust.

Make sure the base is VERY chilled and firm when you put it in the pie crust. We didn't get it firm enough, so when we added the pumpkin filling, the cream cheese floated to the top. It meant we had a pumpkin cheesecake-type pie, which was good but not how it was supposed to be.

PUMPKIN FILLING
1 and 1/4 cups pumpkin puree - we used fresh that we mashed up and froze last fall, but you could use canned as well
1 cup evaporated milk
2 eggs
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt

Mix thoroughly until all ingredients are combined.

Pour the pumpkin mixture over cream cheese layer in pie shell. Cover edges of crust with aluminum foil to prevent excess browning.

Bake at 350 for 25 minutes. Remove foil from edges and bake an additional 25 minutes.

PECAN TOPPING
2 tbl flour
2 tbl brown sugar
2 tbl butter, softened
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Combine. After pie has been in oven for 50 minutes, remove and sprinkle pecans over the top. Bake for an additional 10 to 15 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean and pecan topping is golden.

We tried to do the pecan topping, but it was very gloppy with the butter and certainly didn't "sprinkle." So we skipped it. Next time, maybe we'll just put a few pecans over the top for the last few minutes.