Welcome, November! The month for vegans, Native American heritage, punkin chunkin, flossing, the Quidditch World Cup, and overeating. I might not be so good at quidditch, or flossing, but overeating? Yeah, I can do that.

And this Halloween weekend, I got started early. Mama Nature made it really easy for me to stay inside and cook until the cows come home, cuz we got snow. That’s right. Real, live, cold, wet snow, in October. Saturday afternoon, I filled up a big stockpot with roasted pumpkin soup (recipe forthcoming, I promise). For dessert? A honey sea salt pie with fresh nutmeg whipped cream, the ideal salty sweet. And I didn’t go out for Halloween Friday or Saturday night either, because really, who wants to wear a leotard or fishnet tights when it’s 20 degrees outside? Not this gal. So homeboy and I stayed home and watched The Birds, courtesy of merry ol’ Alfred himself. (Actually, I did most of the movie-watching, because someone fell asleep in the middle of the birds-attacking-schoolchildren scene.)

honey sea salt pie with nutmeg whipped cream
adapted from Four & Twenty Blackbirds pie shop in Brooklyn, NY

1 batch of your favorite pie crust dough (recipe for all-butter crust is here)

1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
3/4 cup sugar
2 T white cornmeal
1/4 t salt
3/4 cup honey
3 eggs
1/2 cup whipping cream
2 t white vinegar
seeds scraped from 1 vanilla bean
1-2 T sea salt to sprinkle on top of the finished pie

any leftover whipping cream, cold
1 T sugar
freshly grated nutmeg

First, prepare your pie crust and blind bake it. Blind baking a crust means that you bake it half-way, so you can fill the crust with your pie filling and it won’t get soggy. Let it cool a bit before you fill it with custard.

While the crust is blind baking, prepare the custard. Combine the melted butter with the sugar, cornmeal and salt. Mix well to make a paste. Add the honey, vinegar and vanilla. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs together with the whipping cream until blended and frothy. Add to the honey mixture, and mix until everything is well-incorporated.

Pour the filling into your pre-baked pie shell and bake at 350 for 45 – 60 minutes. The custard will puff up and the top of the pie will be a golden brown. The center will be a little jiggly, and that’s okay. Carefully remove the pie from the oven to cool. After about an hour, when the custard has deflated, sprinkle the top of the pie with sea salt.

To make the whipped cream, use a handheld mixer to whip the cream in a large bowl until frothy. Add the sugar. Continue whipping until soft peaks form. Grate fresh nutmeg over the top of the whipped cream (err on the side of “less is more” here), whip a little more to form more sturdy peaks, and taste for flavor. Add more nutmeg if needed. Don’t overmix – your whipped cream can easily turn into butter at this point. Cover your whipped cream in a well-sealed container and store in the fridge until ready to use, preferably that day.

Serve slices of honey sea salt pie garnished with your fresh nutmeg-flecked whipped cream.