5 posts tagged “pecan pie”

After my interview with Scott Simon on Weekend Edition, so many people have asked for the recipe.  So, without further ado...

ESPRESSO CHOCOLATE PECAN TART

In this recipe the Cocoa Nibs, coffee extract and bittersweet chocolate cut the sweetness of the traditional filling and add a deeper flavor.

1 (9-inch) unbaked or frozen deep-dish pie crust
6 oz. Bittersweet Chocolate, broken into chunks
3 eggs, slightly beaten
1 cup sugar
1 cup Karo® Light or Dark Corn Syrup
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 ¼  cups pecans
¼  cup Sharffen Berger Cocoa Nibs*
1 Tablespoon Trablit Coffee Extract *

Can be found at Surfas in Culver City or at www.surfasonline.com

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Scatter the chunks of chocolate over the pie crust.

In medium bowl with fork beat eggs slightly. Add sugar, Karo®, butter and coffee extract and stir until blended. Stir in pecans and Cocoa Nibs. Pour into pie crust.

Bake 50 to 55 minutes or until knife inserted halfway between center and edge comes out clean. Cool on wire rack.

A lovely rich and savory side dish for a festive holiday dinner.

A listener named Lynn wrote:

"My friend Mayuka bakes an amazing pie. I think she should open up her own business and call it 'Pie-u-ka.'"

Here is Mayuka's Pecan Pie:

Pecan Pie-u-ka

Pecan Pie

What did Wimpy say? “I’ll pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.”?  Well Monday’s pie became today’s pie after a fire in the oven.  No payment though.  

Apparently a disadvantage to the small interior box of the countertop oven is that one (uhhh, me) must remember to trim the flying edges of the parchment paper I tuck onto the crust to hold the beans for prebaking.  It’s okay though.  Turns out that the crust I had in reserve which was made with milk instead of water is better suited to a savory filling anyway.  So I threw away the fire victim had a beer, and started over. Pecan Pie may not be seasonal, but it was the most frequent request (from the same person, David at KCRW).  So I thought, why not?  I added a few bittersweet chocolate chunks to change it up and made an extra big Pie for the underwriting department.  

The interesting moment of this pie came with the crust.  Since I decided to start fresh I took another look at Rose Levy Barenbaum’s crust repetoire in her The Pie and Pastry Bible.  I choose a very buttery crust in which she uses a little vinegar.  But what I liked and think I will retain as a standard technique is the way she adds the butter for a food processed dough.  She divides the total butter into one third and two thirds.  The one third is cut into chunks and frozen.  The two thirds is added to the flour and processed without pulsing until the dough looks like fine crumbs.  You then add the frozen butter and pulse three times.  The result is a dough which has butter both mixed throughout and in larger blobs.  It was crisp, flaky and buttery indeed.

David's Pecan Pie

Thanks to Kendell S. from Pasadena for this picture of Pecan Pumpkin Pie made from Tartine's recipe.  It's a custard pie with pecans coated in cinnamon brown sugar syrup:

Kendell's Pecan Pumpkin Pie

I love when people tell me about their experience with the recipes we share at Good Food.  A listener had a great response to our Chocolate Espresso Pecan Tart:

"Thank you for the recipe for Chocolate-espresso-pecan pie.  It was a huge hit at our Thanksgiving.  My mother and I bake several pies every year for a large gathering.  She made apple and apple with cranberry and all the crusts.  I made an organic pumpkin and your pecan instead of the traditional southern-style pecan we usually do. (Although in recent years I've been drizzling bittersweet chocolate on top.)

I couldn't pass up the opportunity to play with nibs and the result was even better than I had envisioned.  The only substitution I made was because I couldn't find the coffee extract here in San Diego. But I was happy with results I got by dissolving some instant coffee into some of my leftover french press coffee from the morning.  The crowd always likes the pies but the chocolate-espresso-pecan got noticeably more raves."

Share your story by emailing me, or by commenting below.  Here's that recipe:

ESPRESSO CHOCOLATE PECAN TART

In this recipe the Cocoa Nibs, coffee extract and bittersweet chocolate cut the sweetness of the traditional filling and add a deeper flavor.

1 (9-inch) unbaked or frozen deep-dish pie crust
6 oz. Bittersweet Chocolate, broken into chunks
3 eggs, slightly beaten
1 cup sugar
1 cup Karo® Light or Dark Corn Syrup
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 ¼  cups pecans
¼  cup Sharffen Berger Cocoa Nibs*
1 Tablespoon Trablit Coffee Extract *

*Can be found at Surfas in Culver City or at www.surfasonline.com.

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Scatter the chunks of chocolate over the pie crust.

In medium bowl with fork beat eggs slightly. Add sugar, Karo®, butter and coffee extract and stir until blended. Stir in pecans and Cocoa Nibs. Pour into pie crust.

Bake 50 to 55 minutes or until knife inserted halfway between center and edge comes out clean. Cool on wire rack