Pumpkin Pie-In-A-Jar


For Halloween this year, we’re hosting a pumpkin-themed party to slim down our enormous squash harvest from the family garden. We’ll be serving pumpkin soup with pumpkin biscuits, drinking pumpkin juice, and for dessert? You guessed it: pumpkin pie.

Although we’re baking full-sized pies for the party, I thought it’d be fun to send our guests home with their own individual pumpkin pie-in-a-jar to bake fresh at their convenience. Each pie is the perfect individual-sized dessert, and takes less time to bake than a full sized pie. Just make sure to include instructions for your guests so they know what they’re doing when they’re ready to bake their pie at home.

What You’ll Need:
• (10-15) 4 oz regular mouth jelly jars, or (5-8) half-pint wide mouth jars.
• Accompanying lids and bands.

Filling
• 2 cups pumpkin puree (store bought or freshly roasted)
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs, plus the yolk of a third
• 3 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

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For The Crust
• 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 stick (3/4 cup) cold butter
• 1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
• 2 teaspoons sugar

Mix all of the ingredients for the filling together in a bowl and set aside.

Place the ingredients for the crust into the bowl of a food processor, and pulse until combined. The butter should be evenly distributed throughout the flour mixture in a coarse crumb.

Press the mixture into the sides and bottoms of your clean and dry jars. The mixture should stick to itself once pressed. If not, add another tablespoon or two of cold butter and pulse until you’ve reached desired consistency.

Once all your jars are coated with crust, spoon in the filling, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Place lid and band over pies and store in the freezer until ready to bake.

Note: As an optional flourish, add nuts, crumbled cookies, or dough to the top of your pies. For my pies, I used dough stamped with a leaf-shaped cookie cutter to decorate the top.

To bake, preheat oven to 425°F. Bake pies for 15 minutes, and reduce heat to 350°F. Bake for another 20-30 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

For my pies, I decorated the jars with Halloween-themed tags and labels in the style Spook. I stored them in the freezer until they were ready to gift, and sent them to their recipients with instructions to keep them in the freezer until they’re ready to bake, and included the oven temperature needed as stated above in the instructions.

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Lindsay (114 Posts)

Lindsay is a writer/blogger from Oregon who loves crafting, cooking, gardening, and simple living. You can find her writing about all of this and more on her blog A Wooden Nest.


15 Comments

  4. I LOVE this pumpkin pie-in-a-jar idea, it’s creative and fun, and undoubtedly delicious. I’d like to serve them at a Fall dinner party but as baking is an absolute mystery to me, I have a couple of questions. Can they just be baked without freezing? And I think I know the answer to this one, but just in case, lids off while baking? Thanks!

  5. Hey everyone!

    To answer a few questions:

    @Lynn McCormick: You don’t have to thaw them before baking. You can stick ’em straight in the oven once you remove the lids and bands.

    @Elena Wrightson: You can absolutely bake them without freezing. The freezing is just if you want to store them in your freezer until you’re in the mood for a freshly baked snack. So you could totally make this the day of your fall dinner party, bake them, and let them cool on the rack while you enjoy your dinner. Also, yes to your next question about the lids. They must be removed while baking.

    Hope that helps!
    Lindsay

  9. Hi! My friend told me about these. Such a cute idea. But my husband is in the military and if i ship one of these over to him when hes deployed overseas
    would it spoil before it gets there?

  13. Hi Lindsey,
    I was worried about the jars cracking going from the freezer to a hot oven. Do you preheat the oven, or maybe would it be best to put in a cold oven & let them get warm gradually? Thanks!

    • Hi Lisa,

      I haven’t had a mason jar crack yet on me yet (from baking, anyway), but I could just be lucky. I do let them sit on the tray for a bit before going in the oven, but placing them in a cold oven and allowing them to gradually rise in temperature might be better.

      Lindsay

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