Brown Butter Pumpkin Pie from Four & Twenty Blackbirds

This dreamy brown butter pumpkin pie recipe hails from the famous Four & Twenty Blackbirds pie shop in Brooklyn, New York. It’s hands down the best pumpkin pie you’ll ever make! With a handful of simple yet unexpected ingredients, take your old school pumpkin pie to next level perfection.

(This recipe was originally published in December 2018, but was updated with new photos and content in 2020).

This is THE BEST pumpkin pie you will ever have. It begins with a brown butter butterscotch which gets blitzed with a mixture of pumpkin and spices. A dash of molasses and lemon juice add further flavor complexity. Meanwhile, a surprise addition of carrot juice really takes things over the top.

The result is a decadent, creamy, one-of-a-kind pumpkin pie with a hint of tanginess that almost reminds me of cheesecake but more restrained. This stellar brown butter pumpkin pie is absolutely worth the extra effort to make. I highly recommend it for Thanksgiving, Christmas, the weekend, the office, for fun, or for whatever purpose you choose.

Ingredient notes

• Pie Crust: I include the recipe for the Four & Twenty Blackbirds pie crust below, however you are welcome to use any other pie crust you prefer. This particular version is authentic to the Brooklyn bakery. If you want to use your grandma’s pie dough recipe or even a store-bought crust, you are welcome to do so.
• Pumpkin Puree: While you can theoretically roast your own pumpkin to make puree, canned pumpkin puree is readily available and perfect for the purpose. It provides a reliable and consistent texture. It may also be labeled as solid-pack pumpkin or pure pumpkin. Do not use canned “pumpkin pie filling.” It contains additional ingredients and is not pure pumpkin.
• Spices: This brown butter pumpkin pie includes ground cinnamon, allspice, ginger, and cloves.
• Butter: You’ll need some cold cubed butter to make the homemade pie crust, but you’ll also need butter to make brown butter butterscotch. Melt the butter and continue to cook until it’s a nutty brown color. The milk solids in the butter will get very dark, but they will be strained out eventually.
• Brown Sugar: Use light brown sugar to make your butterscotch. Store your brown sugar in its tightly sealed original bag placed inside a sealed freezer bag with all the air pressed out. The key is to squeeze out all the air from both the original bag (do the best you can) and then put it in another airtight container. This will keep your brown sugar soft and fresh much longer!
• Carrot Juice: This is one of the odd, unexpected ingredients in the brown butter pumpkin pie. The pie is so outstanding that I don’t even question why it contains carrot juice. Drink leftover carrot juice, use it to color homemade dumpling dough orange (replace boiling water with boiling carrot juice), use it in smoothies, or freeze it in ice cube trays for future use.
• Molasses: You’ll only need 1 teaspoon. I’ve tried this recipe with regular molasses and blackstrap molasses. It’s such a small amount that you can use either type of molasses with good results here.
• Lemon Juice: Again, you’re using a pretty small amount, only 2 teaspoons. It gives just a subtle amount of tanginess to the filling.

How to make it

Begin by making the crust. Stir flour, salt, and sugar together in a large bowl. Add cold butter pieces and toss to coat with the flour mixture.

With a pastry blender or your fingers, cut the butter into the flour mixture until mostly pea-size pieces of butter remain. A few larger pieces are okay, but be careful not to overwork the dough.

Combine water, cider vinegar, and ice. Sprinkle it little by little over the flour mixture, and mix until incorporated and until the dough comes together in a ball, with some dry bits remaining. Squeeze and pinch with your fingertips to bring all the dough together.

Shape the dough into a flat disc, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, preferably overnight.

Preheat the oven to 425°F and place a baking sheet on a rack on the lowest position. Roll out your pie dough to ⅛-inch thickness and carefully lay it into a 9-inch pie pan or dish, being careful not to stretch the dough. Trim the edges and crimp as desired. Refrigerate the crust for about 30 minutes to allow it to set.

Prick all over the bottom and sides with a fork about 15 to 20 times. Line the crust with a piece of parchment paper and fill it with pie weights or dry beans. Place the pie on the preheated baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes, until the crimped edges are set but not browned.

Remove the pan and the baking sheet from the oven, lift out the parchment and the pie weights and let the crust cool for a minute. Beat together an egg white and water and brush over the bottom and sides of the crust to help moistureproof it. Return the pan on the baking sheet to the oven and continue baking for 8 to 10 more minutes until pale golden. Remove and cool completely before filling.

Next, in a saucepan melt butter over medium-low heat until it turns nut brown (PHOTO 1).Then immediately add brown sugar, whisk, and then carefully add a little water to loosen it (PHOTO 2). Bring the mixture to a boil and continue simmering until a candy thermometer reads 225°F (PHOTO 3). Slowly add heavy cream and whisk until smooth. Allow to cool for at least 10 minutes. Stir in the vanilla extract (PHOTO 4).

Place the prebaked pie shell on a rimmed baking sheet. In a separate bowl, lightly whisk the eggs and yolks together with the salt and set aside. In the bowl of a food processor blend the pumpkin puree with the spices, molasses, and lemon juice.

With the machine running on low, stream the brown-butter butterscotch through the food processor’s feed tube and process until combined. Stream in the egg mixture, followed by the milk and carrot juice. Blend until smooth, stopping once or twice to scrape down the sides with a rubber spatula.

Strain the filling through a fine-mesh sieve into a separate bowl, then pour into the prebaked shell. Bake until the edges are set and puffed slightly and the center is no longer liquid but still quite wobbly.

Be careful not to overbake or the filling will crack as it cools. Cool completely on a wire rack, 2 to 3 hours. The pie will keep refrigerated for 2 days or at room temperature for 1 day.

Please scroll to the bottom of the post for the full recipe (in a printable recipe card) including ingredient amounts and detailed instructions.

Expert tips and FAQs

Freeze leftover carrot juice in ice cube trays. I have been known to bake this pie for Thanksgiving, freeze extra carrot juice, and make the same brown butter pumpkin pie again for Christmas a few weeks later!

Baking time and overall results can vary greatly depending on the type of pan you use. Metal, glass, and ceramic pie pans or dishes will all behave differently. I typically use ceramic and find it can take a bit longer to bake than metal pans do. I would also recommend using a slightly deeper pie dish if you have one to ensure plenty of room for the filling.

Since there are many variables to baking pie (only one of which is the pan or dish used) you may need to experiment with your pie baking to get the timings just right in your own kitchen.

If your crust edges are already quite browned after the blind-baking stage, you can cover the edges with foil after filling the crust, and bake the pie with the crust edges tented in foil for the entirety of the baking process. This will keep the crust from browning and drying out too much.

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• Pumpkin Pasties (from Harry Potter)
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