Pecan Pie... another attempt

This blog, I've come to realize, is really just for my own record keeping of my experiments.  For those of you who actually read this (which I know there aren't all that many) this is yet another attempt to find the perfect pecan pie.  I have a work Christmas potluck tomorrow and I saw an opportunity to work on the pie.  I figure you guys don't really need another picture of a pie.  This one turned out kind of on the darker side.  So in previous attempts, the chess turned out kind of runny and was really quite a mess.  So this time I added a little flour to it in the hopes that it might thicken it up.  So without further adieu, here's what I did tonight. 

Pecan Pie #5

1 cup pecans
1 bar 85% chocolate, roughly chopped
1/2 cup sugar
1/8 tsp. salt
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 cup dark maple syrup, plus a little drizzle
1/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup honey
2 oz. Amaretto
1/4 cup melted butter (1/2 stick)
2 tsp. vanilla extract
3 eggs, well beaten
1 egg white
1 8" pie shell

Preheat oven to 350.

The chess: Combine the sugar, flour, and salt in a mixing bowl.  To it stir in maple syrup, molasses, honey, Amaretto, melted butter, and vanilla extract.  Make sure the mixture is not hot from the melted butter when you add your eggs or they'll scramble.

Put the pecans in a saute pan and roast them for a few minutes, moving them around in the pan every few minutes.  Keep a close eye on them.  Burning them is a bad thing.  When they start to smell good, they're done.  Drizzle a little maple syrup and let it reduce on medium-low to low for a few minutes.  Again, keep a close eye on it so as not to burn anything.  When it's reduced to a beautiful candy like consistency, remove it from the heat.

Pour the chess into your pie shell.  I ended up not using all my chess mixture because it would have overflowed.  Drop the chocolate and pecans in and stir them a little so that they're evenly distributed.  Brush the crust with your egg white and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake for 50 minutes.  Let cool on a cooling rack for a few hours.


Tomorrow night Noah is coming over and we're going to fry some chicken (Thomas Keller's recipe) and we're going to taste test the Dogfish Squall IPA against the Dogfish 90 Minute IPA.  Should be fun. 

-CJ