A Thanksgiving favourite dessert, and of course also great for Christmas, the traditional Pecan Pie combines a flaky crust redolent of butter along with a delicious, roasted-pecan filling that has everyone asking for one more. And to be honest, nothing renders a holiday table more warm and inviting than a Pecan Pie. Although it is traditionally made with corn syrup, people also prefer using maple syrup or molasses instead.
Pecan Pie is a perfect make-ahead Thanksgiving dessert. Just make sure that while baking, you don’t burn the pecans. So in order to avoid that, if you find that your pecans have started browning during the baking process, just cover it with an aluminum foil!
Pecan Pie
Time taken: 2 h
Taste-o-meter: Sweet
Ingredients for the pie base (pastry dough):
- All-purpose flour: 2 cups
- Salt: 1 tsp
- Sugar: 1 tbsp
- Butter (salted): 6 tbsp
- Shortening: 6 tbsp
- Ice water: 6-8 tbsp
Ingredients for the Pecan Pie filling:
- White corn syrup: 1 cup
- Brown sugar: 1 cup
- Salt: 1/3 tsp
- Melted butter: 1/3 cup
- Vanilla extract: 1 tsp
- Eggs: 3
- Roasted pecans: around 2 cups
Method:
- In a large bowl, mix-in the all-purpose flour, 1 tsp salt and 1 tbsp sugar. Fold-in 6 tbsp butter, the shortening and the ice water. Cut-in the butter through the flour and mix the ingredients well. At this stage, it should have the texture of raw cornmeal.
- Refrigerate this dough for at least 30 min.
- Roll it out to a 1″ thick dough, place it into a pie pan, flute its edges, prick the pie crust all over and bake for 15 min in a pre-heated oven’s middle rack, at 200C.
- When it is strictly golden, bring it out and cool.
- For the filling, melt butter, taking care not to burn the same. Cool it down to room temperature and add the brown sugar slowly, whisking continuously. Mix-in the corn syrup, salt and vanilla.
- In another bowl, beat the eggs and fold them in to the previous mixture.
- To assemble, pour-in this liquid in the pie crust, decorate with 2 cups of roasted pecans arranged in concentric circles and bake foil-covered, for another 30-40 min at 325C.
- Test with a butter knife if the pie filling is done. If the knife comes out clean, your Pecan Pie is done. Enjoy warm or cool, either with whipped cream or with ice cream.