Vegan Pumpkin Pie

cutey pie from http://www.nataliedee.com/archives/2007/Nov/

In search for a health­ier Thanksgiving din­ner, we looked on the web for recipes for vegan pump­kin pie. We mod­i­fied and com­bined a few of them to give you MyShimmer’s take on Vegan Pumpkin Pie.

Ingredients:

Graham Cracker Pie Crust 

• 1½ cups gra­ham cracker crumbs
• ¼ cup sugar
• 1/3 cup melted margarine

Filling

• 1 (16-ounce) pack­age extra-firm lite silken tofu, drained
• 1 (15-ounce) can pump­kin purée or 1 heap­ing cup of cooked pumpkin
• 1 to 1 1/4 cups brown or golden sugar
• 4 tea­spoons blended “pump­kin pie spice” OR:
  • 1 tea­spoon vanilla extract
  • 1/2 tea­spoon salt
  • 1 tea­spoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 tea­spoon ground ginger
  • 1/4 tea­spoon ground cloves

Directions:

Crust

1. Put crack­ers in the blender to cre­ate crumbs, or put them in a bag that closes and roll them with a rolling pin until you have the desired amount of crumbs.
2. Preheat oven to 375°F. In medium bowl, mix well crumbs, sugar, and melted margarine.
3. With back of spoon, press rest of mix­ture to bot­tom and side of 9-inch pie plate, mak­ing a small rim.
4. Bake 8 min­utes then remove crumb crust to wire rack to cool.

Filling

1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Blend tofu in a food proces­sor until creamy and smooth, for about four min­utes. Stop the machine every once in a while to scrape large pieces of tofu down into the machine’s blades.
2. Add pump­kin, sugar, 1/4 cup of the syrup, vanilla, salt, cin­na­mon, gin­ger and cloves and purée until smooth, stop­ping the machine and scrap­ing the mix­ture down once in a while. The result should be a light orange-colored paste with no lumps of tofu.
3. Pour pump­kin fill­ing into pie shell and bake until just set and a tooth­pick inserted in the cen­ter comes out clean, about 1 hour.
4. Serve warm or chilled, plain or topped with non-dairy whipped cream or soy cream. 

Health ben­e­fit of pumpkin

Pumpkins are extremely high in antiox­i­dants and beta-carotene. They are low in calo­ries and amaz­ingly full of fiber. Pumpkins are 90 per­cent water and were once rec­om­mended for remov­ing freck­les and cur­ing snake bites.

Beta carotene — Research shows that peo­ple who eat a diet rich in beta-carotene are less likely to develop cer­tain can­cers than those who fail to include beta-carotene-rich foods in their diet. Beta-carotene has been iden­ti­fied as a lead­ing heart-disease and can­cer fighter

Potassium — Studies show peo­ple who have a potas­sium rich diet lower the risk for hyper­ten­sion. Potassium rich foods include bananas, broc­coli, avo­ca­dos, pome­gran­ate and many others.

Zinc — Not only is zinc a major boost for your immune sys­tem, it also aids in bone den­sity sup­port for peo­ple at risk for osteoporosis.

High in Fiber — Diets rich in fiber may pre­vent can­cer, heart dis­ease and other seri­ous ailments.

Vitamins A and C — Pumpkins con­tains lots of anti-oxidant vit­a­mins A and C, as well as alpha-hydroxy-acids which helps to reduce the signs of aging.

 Benefits infor­ma­tion thanks to: http://hubpages.com/hub/Health-Benefits-of-Pumpkin