Pumpkin Pie with Crunchy Pecan Topping

I love Thanksgiving and it’s such a bummer that I have to go to work each year. I would love to stay home and cook all day! Maybe I can stay home on our newly minted bank holiday, April 29th, and bake cupcakes in honor of the royal wedding.
I love Thanksgiving even more now. When I was studying to to be an accountant one sitting of the exams always fell on Thanksgiving. Between going to work all day, studying at night and on the weekends there was no time to bake pie. Now that I’ve been finished for some time I enjoy this time of year even more (really makes you appreciate your free time).
This is a basic Pumpkin Pie recipe but instead of evaporated milk I used vanilla soy milk to make it dairy free and it tastes exactly the same. I can only eat Pumpkin Pie with some kind of biscuit base. I think all the spices in the pie are complimented by the cinnamon in graham crackers or the ginger in ginger nut biscuits.
I love this topping (from Bakerella). It’s so amazing. The chocolate chips and the pecans are just heavenly. I should have maybe put some aluminium foil over the top towards the end so the edges didn’t get so crisp.
Dairy Free Pumpkin Pie
adapted from Sunset
Ingredients
Pie
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1 can (15 oz) pureed pumpkin
1 1/4 cups vanilla soy milk
2 eggs
Crust
Graham Cracker shell purchased
or Ginger Nut biscuit base (300g ground biscuits mixed with 80g melted butter and pressed into a pie shell)
Topping
1 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 tbs maple syrup
1. Pre-heat oven to 425 F/ 220 C. In a large bowl, mix sugar, cinnamon, salt, ginger, nutmeg and cloves.
2. Add pumpkin, soy milk and eggs. Whisk until well blended. Pour into the pie shell. I had a little leftover so don’t overfill your pie.
3. Mix all of the ingredients for the topping in a small bowl and set aside.
4. Bake the pie for 15 minutes then reduce temperature to 350 F/180 C and gently pour the topping mixture evenly over the top of the pie and bake for 45 more minutes until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean (place a piece of foil over top towards the end if getting crisp on top. (I meant to make mine a bit crisp…).
5. Set the pie to cool on a rack for at least 2 hours.