Maple Pecan Pie

Still on the Thanksgiving theme after last week’s pumpkin pie, this week it’s pecan pie. The recipe, from Cook’s Illustrated (subscription required), used corn syrup, which we don’t get in the UK, but I noticed their their ‘old fashioned‘ version of the pie used maple syrup, and as we had the end of a bottle going spare I decided to substitute that rather than using golden syrup.

The crust I just made in the food processor, chilling as often as possible to avoid my hot hands ruining it.

6 1/4 ounces plain flour
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
50g vegetable shortening
60g butter
~4 tbsp ice water

This got rolled out and put in the pie dish, crimped, and bake in the fridge before baking.

This got blind baked under foil and beads for 15 minutes at 180c fan, then another 10min without the foil. I should have left it in longer as it was still a bit anaemic in the end.

Then it got washed with an egg yolk and had just a minute in the oven to let this set. I’m not sure what this step was for. I also wasn’t sure why the recipe called for pricking the dough (which I didn’t do) given it was going to have a custard put inside it.

While that was cooking the filling was made (as it wants to go in the pastry while it’s warm).

85g unsalted butter
7 ounces dark brown sugar
1/2 tsp table salt
3 eggs
3/4 cup maple syrup
1 tbsp vanilla extract
8 ounces chopped pecans

The original recipe was once again odd here (which is strange for Cook’s Illustrated). It called for melting things in water baths and all sorts. I just went with what little I know about making a custard: melt the butter, mix in the sugar and syrup, take off the heat and beat a small amount into the egg/vanilla mix, before whisking the rest in. Then it was returned to the hob until it went shiny, and the pecans were added.

The filling then went in the pie crust, and this went in the oven at 120c fan. Transferring a liquid pie to the oven is hard… might be easier to put the crust in the oven then transfer… or expect more heat loss in the slow transfer to the shelf!

After 50 minutes there was a bit of a crust on the filling, but it was clearly still liquid underneath, so I put it back in for another 10 minutes, and it felt set. I think this was too long as I think it’s slightly over done.