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Comment by reactordev | Hacker News Reader

Not sure about where you’re from but where I’m from, you don’t make pumpkin pie from a can. You make it with pumpkin purée. From scratch. Get out of here with your non-pumpkin pumpkin pie propaganda.

Some pumpkin, blended into a paste, some brown sugar, an egg or two, some heavy cream and some cinnamon and crushed cloves and you have your pie filling.

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You can make it with homemade butternut squash puree too, and it will taste better because of its sweetness. Give it a try sometime.

That’s a butternut squash pie, not a pumpkin pie. ;)

Try with pumpkin, nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves… it’s that old timer pumpkin pie taste.

Apparently coffee cake has no coffee in it so we really can’t believe anything anymore.

Oh but mine does… the glaze is powdered sugar and espresso.

My life has been a lie. That sounds incredible.

To be fair - coffee cake in the US is cake to have with coffee and doesn’t normally contain any coffee.

In the UK and EU, coffee cake is cake with coffee.

Likewise tea cakes in the US are cakes made with tea and tea cakes in UK and EU are cakes to have with tea. So…

Not a lie, just a Spider-Man meets Spider-Man moment when you learn you can actually make coffee cakes with coffee (or espresso) and you can make tea cakes with tea (I prefer oolong).

I’m from the EU and I’ve never had coffee cake with no coffee nor tea cake with no tea. Very fascinating tidbit about the naming, TIL

To confuse matters more, in this part of EU the coffee cake is made with coffee and tea cake is made without tea.

pie you have pumpkin with

You owe me a new keyboard and monitor tyvm

Were you drinking hot computer tea when you read that comment?

Oyster stout shouldn't have oysters in, but usually does.

The cake is a lie.

This sounds good but not the kind of coffee cake I’m used to

yellow or moist white cake (or marbled cake) with butter crumble brown sugar top and an espresso glaze. The coffee cake of coffee lovers.

Reading this thread I can't help but feel like HN readers need a reactordev recipe book.

But coffee cake is the cake you have with coffee, not made from it.

Not true. Standard staple in my oarents house was coffee cake made from coffee with walnuts.

well maybe pumpkin pie is a pie you have with pumpkin

Wait until you learn about Tunnock’s Tea Cakes.

There's no tea, and they aren't cakes - but there is a whole fresh Tunnock in every one!

Next you are probably going to tell me black forest cake is not made in the black forest any more.

It’s only Black Forest cake if it comes from that region of Germany. Otherwise it’s known as Chocolate Cherry Conifer Cake.

American coffee cake doesn't have coffee, but English coffee cake does.

Wait until you find out what baby food is really made of.

In Australia it’s known as “butternut pumpkin”. Anyway I always used kabocha squash.

+1 kabocha rules in pie

In most places in the world, the word “pumpkin“ refers to squash. A squash pie is also a pumpkin pie.

Yes, and pumpkins are squashes (Cucurbita) but pumpkin originates in New England USA where it refers to the orange squash gourd used to make Halloween carvings and decorations. Being that I'm from the US, this is "pumpkin". Not to downplay squash-based pastries or pies but there's only one pie that I will eat, day or night, no matter what - the beautiful, delicious, pumpkin pie. Plain, with whipped cream, with ice cream, with chocolate drizzle, with caramel.

I freely acknowledge that you can make a delicious “pumpkin” pie with butternut squash, but a real sugar pie pumpkin (use Halloween leftovers and their mealy starchy flesh at your peril) remains superior in my opinion. Sweet potato pie, though, can be absolutely delightful with no squash in sight. Just don’t call it pumpkin pie. ;)

I've tried it and my experience is the exact opposite. I have good results with for example "Crown Prince" variety pumpkins, which I find far sweeter and tastier than butternut.

if you're looking for a good pumpkin pie alternative while pumpkins are out of season, sweet potato pie is also excellent.

What's fun about this is that I was taught from my mother, and her mother before her, to use Butternut Squash when making "pumpkin pie" from scratch.

This "tradition" of using Butternut Squash instead goes back to the 1930s at least.

Some areas have different ingredients depending on what’s available. Here in the United States, real pumpkin is preferred. You can use any gourd to make a pie but for the true pumpkin pie aficionados like myself, I can tell the difference when someone uses real pumpkin vs butternut squash vs sweet potato vs just creme, eggs, and brown sugar and some flour (I’m looking at you, Wegmans).

In the southeast coast of US, if you make a “pumpkin pie” with squash, you won’t be invited back next year.

Given that my mother, grandmother, and I, were born in the States, I can definitely say that "preferred" isn't as wide spread as you think it is.

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