Under 6″ in diameter, these pie pans are a great way to make smaller, pre-portioned pies.

Since it was just me and the hubby for Christmas dinner, I didn’t want to make a large dessert with leftovers. With all the holiday cookies, treats and snacks that arrived from friends and family, the last thing I needed to add was a tempting 10″ pumpkin pie. I really hate wasting food, but I knew I’d just toss it out after Christmas.  Then I saw the solution to my problem in William Sonoma — small pie pans.

My home pie pans are all 10 inches — that’s a lot of pie. But I spotted these lovely dishes (under 6″ in diameter). Sweet! While my husband views these as a single serving (heck, he thinks a 10″ pie is a single serving too), I view it as a double serving, or two days, of low carb dessert. Not too shabby.

A ramekin is a great dish to have on hand it you want to make pre-portioned desserts.

So I went ahead and made two small low carb pumpkin pies.

But I ended up having more of the almond crust mixture than I needed. What’s a low carb girl who doesn’t like to waste food to do?  Take the tiny dessert one step further with tiny ramekins!  Yep, I just took the small amount of crust and pressed it to the bottom and up the sides of these little dishes. Presto! Instant single servings of pie.

My plan to make a small dessert went astray when I ended up splitting up all the ingredients that go into a 10″ pie into 6 smaller dishes. Dot, repeat this until you mean it: “It’s OK to toss out leftovers.”

I had more than enough pumpkin filling for both pie pans and ramekins. In fact, I ended up using my crème brûlée dishes to make small crustless pumpkin pies.

After baking everything I realized I ended up making a 10″ low carb pumpkin pie after all.

I just portioned the pie before baking. D’oh!