Is it ever too early for pie? Yes, it's barely October but some Valley stores already have Christmas decorations up, which means like it or not, the holiday season is here. We happen to love the period between October and January and will take any excuse under the sun to make seasonal pie. That's why we dug up this wingding recipe from good ol' Paula Deen.

If we were really hardcore, we'd give you a lovely write-up about the glories of using real pumpkins instead of canned, but that's not how we roll. Deen's recipe is relatively traditional. It's rich, as is her style, with butter and half-and-half and a package of cream cheese.

Deen's recipe leaves you more than enough filling for one pie. You could probably even stretch and make two with it. With our leftovers, we filled a few ramekins and baked them separately. The other thing to bear in mind is that Deen calls for the pie to cook for 50 minutes. We baked our pie for an hour and five minutes and could still have left the pie in the oven longer.