What's Better Than Pumpkin Pie? Goat Cheese Pumpkin Pie.

You know pumpkin pie: sweet enough, unsophisticated, somehow made with a vegetable.

It's fine but, like, meh?

Yet it's the reason why pumpkin spice mania exists—and for that alone, it should be hanged, drawn, and quartered in the public square. Fuckouttahere, pumpkin spice.

But pumpkin pie doesn't need to be so basic, so criminally mediocre. Pumpkin pie doesn't need to shop at Delia*s, for god's sake.

Realizing that it was overdue for a makeover, Cara Nicoletti gave the staid ol' pie a bit of an upgrade with a crust made of crushed almond cookies and rosemary, rather than plain shortcrust pastry. She then took pumpkin puree—not canned "pie filling," but the pure, uncut flesh of the gourd—and mixed it with cream cheese. Oh, and goat cheese, too.

And yes, even a little bit of pumpkin spice. Because she had to.

The result? A sweet, herbal, nuanced dessert with a layer of tangy, goaty funk that quickly replaces the dime-a-dozen versions you've eating a thousand times in your life. It's a gosh-dang miracle.

Bye-bye, basic pie. Chèvre that in your pie-hole.