Life as a PhD student at MIT isn't easy. Endless problem sets, exams, sponsor visits and committee meetings result in many sleepless nights. Your research work becomes your life and you feel guilty for every moment spent not working.

One of my guilty pleasures is baking. Whenever I need to celebrate or drown my sorrows, which occurs frequently as a graduate student, I find a new recipe. Over the past couple of years, I have subjected many of my friends and neighbors to my concoctions. They haven't seen anything yet!

For Christmas, I received the Flour cookbook. For those of you who don't know what Flour is, I feel sorry for you. Flour is a fantastic bakery and cafe located close to MIT. I'll often stop off here on my way home after a bad day for a sweet, sugary pick-me-up.

After receiving the cookbook, I decided with all my copious free time (yeah right) that I was in need of another project. My mission is to bake every recipe from the Flour cookbook before I graduate. Now the race is on.

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Flour's Famous Pumpkin Pie

The pie shell ready for blind-baking.
 Fall in New England congers images of beautiful, colorful trees, stressed out students, and of course, pumpkin pies.  To fight the usual fall semester stresses and help out a friend, I decided to make a couple (or 8) pumpkin pies using the recipe from the Flour cookbook.  I'd been told that their recipe is to die for.
The recipe starts as most pie recipes do, with making the dough for the pie crust.  This part was handled by my friend Ahmed.  The crusts, as usual, were rich and buttery.  The filling consists of canned pumpkin, spices and 3 different type of cream (oh yes).
Cooking the filling.
The results were absolutely awesome.  The filling was sooo rich and creamy.  I absolutely loved it and I'm someone who isn't completely into pumpkin pies.  Needless to say, those 8 pumpkin pies were demolished in no time by residents of Sidney-Pacific and graduate students in Mechanical Engineering.  This recipe will definitely be used again next fall.

The final product.

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