In our five-and-a-half year marriage, I have only made pecan pie for him one other time, a month or two after we got married. Why am I such a bad, depriving wife, you ask? Because really, he wasn't deprived at all. The pecan I made for him was terrible, with a super tough crust. And his mom provides him with at least one pecan pie every time she visits or we visit her. You really can't have pecan pie very often because it is pretty much pure sugar and corn syrup, plus some pecans. Hers is just way better than anything I could make.
Those are my excuses, anyway.
This time, I used a 9" pie pan, so I had ample crust for fluting. I went with a rope crust. It took me a few tries, but I think I eventually got the hang of it.
Try as I might, I could not get my camera to focus on the foreground, so this is as good as it got.
Here's the pie all filled with pecans on top, ready to bake.
Baked!
And then, because it was Valentine's Day, I added some little crust hearts. Aww.
Unfortunately, even though I overbaked it (observe the slightly burned pecans and overbrown crust), the filling didn't totally set, and it was more like pecan soup. It still tasted super good (I had one "slice" and Joel had the rest). But it was disappointing to have it be so soupy. I like to blame the elevation.
Ratings:
Flavor: 9
Execution: 7-I kind of don't feel like the soupiness was my fault because I followed the recipe, but it definitely wasn't a perfectly executed pie.
Difficulty: Easy. Arranging the pecans on top took a little while (the recipe read: just picture in your mind the most delicious-looking pecan pie you've ever seen...arrange the pecan halves on top so the pie looks tempting).
Overall rating: **** 4 out of 5 stars.
I'm on the lookout for a good pecan pie recipe, too. I made the Pioneer Woman's pecan pie and it totally bubbled over the sides and made a huge mess in my oven. I thought it might have been because of a little deviation I had made, so I tried it again following the recipe exactly and the same thing happened again. It still tasted really good and had a good filling, but it looked terrible.
ReplyDeleteI have noticed that a lot of pecan pie recipes have you put the pecans on the bottom of the shell and then pour the filling over it and then the pecans magically float up to the top. Maybe that would have given you a little more cook time before the pecans started burning? When you find the perfect recipe, you'll have to share it with me so I can get over my pecan pie frustration.
When you do it that way, do the pecans magically float to the top as artistically as if you had arranged them on the top?
ReplyDeleteThat was a wonderful pecan pie. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteIn my mind, the ideal pecan pie would be filled with flan (or pudim as the Brasileiros say) instead of a really thick syrup. Pecan flan. Peflan. Mmmmmmm...