Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Come on, man.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

The willow is too close to the house.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

In my day, never was longer.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

I really should read my own blog.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

You are here: Home / Food & Recipes / Food / Chocolate Pecan Pie

Chocolate Pecan Pie

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In the comments to my pear tarte tartin post over the weekend I promised to post the recipe for my chocolate pecan pie. This is one of the deserts I usually make for Thanksgiving, so here you all go. If you all are really good, I might put up my peanut butter cup pie, which is a pie sized/shaped peanut butter cup. Or maybe I won’t…

Ingredients:

1 unbaked pie crust or pastry shell (I like to use the Pillsbury pie crusts in the dairy case)

4 tablespoons butter

3 ounces semisweet chocolate

1 cup light corn syrup

½ cup sugar

1 ¼ tsps pure vanilla extract

¼ tsp salt

3 large eggs

1 ½ cups pecan halves

whipped cream

Instructions:

Prepare pastry shell and set aside.

In medium saucepan, melt butter with chocolate, stirring until smooth.

Remove from heat and beat in corn syrup, sugar, vanilla, salt and eggs.

Mix well. Place pecans on bottom of pastry shell. Pour chocolate mixture over pecans. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour or until knife inserted 1 inch from edge comes out clean. Serve with whipped cream, ice cream, creme anglaise, chocolate sauce, and/or any combination of those you prefer!

Reader Interactions

85Comments

  6. 6.

    Mike J

    TV ad: “Star Wars: the force awakens. This film has not been rated.”

    I will never be on the MPAA rating board because I’d vote for NC-17 just to fuck with them. You can’t show a naked wookie!

  7. 7.

    Punchy

    I wanna know what to add to stuffing to make it taste less bland. Garlic? Curry? Mass quants of onion powder?

  8. 8.

    dexwood

    I’ve said this before, I like cake, but I love pie. Our trusty old oven died last weekend and can’t be repaired. The new one won’t be delivered until Friday, the day after Angstgiving. My first thought was not about the loss of a turkey, but for the pies I’ll not have.

  11. 11.

    Starfish

    Though Adam knows geopolitics, he does not know pie. The pie that he is writing about is often called derby pie. And to do it right, you replace that one cup of light corn syrup with one cup of maple syrup.

  12. 12.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Punchy:

    Not onion powder, but onion for sure. Some garlic. Rosemary and sage. And don’t forget texture — diced celery, and sliced water chestnuts, while not very flavourful on their own, add a lot of interest to a dressing or stuffing because crunch.

  19. 19.

    NineJean

    Peanut butter cup, uh pie? I have a couple of nieces that would think they’d died & gone to heaven if I showed up wi that. Too late for turkey day, but would love to have it for Christmas!

  20. 20.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Suzanne: Cornbread? In stuffing? You clearly aren’t a northern WASP with years of tradition and blandness in your past. Luckily, my parents escaped traditon and went boho, so weird and spicy foods were a staple of my childhood. OTOH, T-day, X-mas, and Easter – we bow to lares et penates…..

  28. 28.

    NotMax

    @Punchy

    Sauteed onion and celery.

    Most basic of spices to add punch: Poultry seasoning + some additional ground sage. Mix ’em up in a little chicken broth and pour over stuffing before final cooking.

  30. 30.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Punchy: You want my cornbread stuffing recipe:
    Bessie’s Cornbread Stuffing:
    Make 6 boxes of Jiffy Cornbread Mix (instructions on box) in a sheet pan. And allow to cool. Remove the giblets and sweatbreads from inside the turkey and saute them on medium low in butter with two diced onions. Once the onions are translucent and the giblets/sweetbreads are cooked through remove from heat and allow to cool. Thinly chop six to eight large celery stalks. Take the cooled giblets and sweetbreads and run them through a robo-chef grinder or mince fine by hand. Crumble the cool cornbread into a very large mixing bowl. Incorporate the ground/finely minced giblets/sweatbreads, onions, and celery. Add salt, fresh ground pepper, poultry seasoning, and sage to taste. Add chicken or turkey stock (I use the low sodium UHT stuff in the boxes) until the mixture is moist – not drowned, moist. If you’re stuffing it into the bird, it can be drier as it’ll pick up juices from the bird. If you’re cooking it separately, making it a bit moister. Either stuff it or place in a baking dish. If baking separately cover it and heat it back up thoroughly so that all the flavors combine. And you’re good to go.

  31. 31.

    Linnaeus

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    ‘Zactly. I’ve had it so sweet you could crunch the sugar crystals. I like pies with a bit of tartness to them, which is why I like apple and cherry the best.

    And this is not a dig on pecan pie qua pecan pie. If that’s what you like, roll with it.

  32. 32.

    Adam L Silverman

    @dexwood: I had that happen my second year in Carlisle. My oven was dying. I had purchased a new one at the pre-black Friday black Friday sale, but they couldn’t deliver it till the Monday after the holiday. My Mom had come up for Thanksgiving, I had my Nepalese general, my Kenayn colonel and his wife, my Algerian colonel and his entire family – including a nephew, and several other folks coming. I told my Mom that we were eating out and not using the oven until Wednesday night for baking and Thursday for everything else. As long as it got through Thursday night, I didn’t care if it blew up on Friday morning. The old thing made it and the holiday meal was wonderful.

  36. 36.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NineJean: I’ll try to put it up tomorrow sometime. I’m working on something that’s taking up some time right now, but if I can knock it out by mid afternoon, I’ll try to post the recipe before I head off to the gym and the dojo.

  39. 39.

    mclaren

    This is one of the deserts I usually make for Thanksgiving, so here you all go.

    Making a desert for Thanksgiving takes a lot of work. You have to clear land, bulldoze down trees, uproot grass, import lots of sand, fill in all the watering holes. And even then, how can you be sure nothing will grow there afterwards?

  41. 41.

    Punchy

    Thanks everyone for the stuffing suggys! Seems that celery, broth, and sage are popular add-backs. Gunna get on that…

  44. 44.

    NotMax

    @Omnes Omnibus

    Having lived for a few years deep, deep in Pennsylvania Dutch country and thus subjected to many a shoo fly pie, pecan pie seems positively astringent in comparison.

    :)

    Enjoy eating most nuts, but have never been a big fan of pecans.

  46. 46.

    Suzanne

    @Omnes Omnibus: Actually, I was,raised that way. And as soon as all those people died. I said FUCK YEAH and started making good food.

    Ohhhhh I use so much garlic and hot sauce.

  51. 51.

    Suzanne

    Having had stuffing/dressing with both white bread and cornbread, I will swear that cornbread blows white bread out of the water.

    However, this year, we are all sick of turkey, so we are doing prime rib and Gruyere mac and cheese and Gorgonzola mashed potatoes. I have done the roasted turkey, the brined turkey, the spatchcocked turkey. They are all good (though the spatchcocked birds are the best)….but they are all still turkey, and therefore my least favorite part of the Thanksgiving meal.

  55. 55.

    Suzanne

    @Omnes Omnibus: The traditional Protestant food is all gross. My grandmother used to make ham with this fuckin’ glaze on it every Christmas. Tasted like cough syrup. SUCKED. As soon as she died—BOOM I am done with eating that forever.

    She had one great recipe, for this cream cheese dip that she served with wavy potato chips. Every holiday got this dip. I have improved it significantly with garlic, lemon zest, and dill. My friends have renamed it “crack dip”, though we call it “once-a-year dip”, as it is too decadent to have more often than that.

  57. 57.

    Adam L Silverman

    @slag: Slag, I just went back and checked. Apparently I did not ever post my key lime pie recipe. Apparently memory is the second thing to go… Here it is:
    Key Lime Pie

    1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
    1/2 cup granulated sugar
    4 tablespoons (1/2 stick butter) melted
    2 (14-ounce) cans condensed milk
    1 cup key lime or regular lime juice
    2 whole eggs

    Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

    In a bowl, mix the graham cracker crumbs, sugar, and butter with your hands. Press the mixture firmly into a 9-inch pie pan, and bake until brown, about 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool to room temperature before filling.

    Lower the oven temperature to 325 degrees F.

    In a separate bowl, combine the condensed milk, lime juice, and eggs. Whisk until well blended and place the filling in the cooled pie shell. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes and allow to chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.

  60. 60.

    NotMax

    @Suzanne

    No longer as prevalent as used to be, but any place worth its salt here for local plate lunches would include on the menu a take-out container with two scoops sticky rice, one scoop potato-mac salad and a heaping helping of turkey tails.

    Yes, just the tails.

  67. 67.

    NotMax

    @Suzanne

    Have seen teriyaki turkey necks for take-out, too.

    Walked into a local Filipino place here once, and there was a deep steam table tray chock full of something I could not readily identify.

    The hand-printed sign taped to the display glass read…

    (not making this up)

    …Fried Cow Lips.

  71. 71.

    reality-based

    @Punchy:

    Things I have successfully added to stuffing (not all of them at once, of course! )

    Crumbled Bacon
    Dried Apples
    Pecans
    Dried Cranberries
    Golden Raisins
    Chopped Sauteed Shitake Mushrooms
    Chopped Sauteed Kale (weird, I know – but it worked.. I put the golden raisins in this one, too. )
    With cornbread stuffing – diced roasted red bell peppers

    Unfortunately, my favorite add-in – chopped roasted vacuum-packed chestnuts, imported packed in glass jars – is apparently unavailable here in the wilds of North Dakota (where I have returned after years in Silicon Valley). so no chestnuts for me.

    Think I’ll do cornbread/bacon/onion/celery/dried apple – lots of sage and thyme from the garden, LOTS of salt – but i’ll miss my chestnuts!

  73. 73.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    Well, I awoke in a sweat, and am listening to Hats by The Blue Nile. I am officially ill.

    And I’m becoming cross with the suggestions of autocorrect.

  75. 75.

    Origuy

    I don’t go home for Thanksgiving, but I do for Christmas. For years, my little sister has made that awful green bean casserole with Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup. I think she was the only one who ate much of it. Last year, as I recall, she gave up.

    My family is scattered for Thanksgiving. I’m in California, little sister is with Dad in Indiana, and my other sister and her family are in Philadelphia for the parade. My niece will be playing sax with the Brownsburg, Indiana HS band.

  76. 76.

    opiejeanne

    @Origuy: It’s late, I took a hydrocodone for my right shoulder (wrenched it good in a fall a month ago), so I think I can be forgiven for reading that your niece will be playing sex with the Brownsburg, Indiana HS band.

  77. 77.

    Origuy

    @opiejeanne: You startled me and made me double-check that I spelled that right. I hope your shoulder gets better soon. I wrenched mine climbing out of a steep ravine earlier this year. I’d slid in and managed not to hurt myself on the way down, but I had to haul myself up pulling on bushes.

    One of the Philly TV stations will be streaming the parade. It starts at 5:30 PST, but I’m going to try to wake up for it after my Scottish dance party Wednesday night.

  78. 78.

    HeartlandLiberal

    Adam Silverman understands how to make a pecan pie on steroids.

    My wife makes a similar Southern pecan pie (think Alabama origins), with chocolate, that is among the greatest pies any human will ever be privileged to taste. I am printing out his recipe to give her as a hint of what we could do to really derail the diets we are on right now for a few days.

    Seriously, if you have never tasted pecan pie, you really have not fulfilled your life.

  79. 79.

    Betty Cracker

    @Adam L Silverman: Whew! Looks like your recipe is very similar to the Epicurious one I linked, though less eggy. I like to try different ones, as long as they don’t contain Cool Whip. Any key lime recipe with Cool Whip goes straight into the round file.

  84. 84.

    J R in WV

    @NotMax:

    A good alternative is to use the standard pecan recipe with a couple of wise substitutions and additions:

    First, replace the corn syrup with maple syrup, richer in flavor, not as sweet. Corn syrup is the HP Lovecraft of dessert making! Just don’t do it! Never go down into the dark basement alone without both a weapon AND a torch!

    Second, replace the pecans with either english walnuts, which are not as sweet as pecans, or (Mrs J’s fav) black walnuts, which are even a little bitter, although still rich in complex flavors.

    Third, serve these puppies with a small scoop of good vanilla ice cream, which cuts the richness of the pie filling just enough, while complementing the flavor! I know it’s hard to believe that adding ice cream can make something less rich, but it is so.

    I have won several pie contest party awards with my maple/pecan/walnut pies. I would make one for this holiday meal if I hadn’t been asked to make my giant pineapple upside down skillet cake. It’s a from scratch cake with lots of egg beating and flour blending, but the reward is so good.

    I love cooking, and eating and drinking. And we have a bagpiper coming down for the party, it’s gonna be awesome.

  85. 85.

    Spike

    @Fogeyman: This matches my sister’s version of this delicacy, except she marinates the pecans in the bourbon first. I couldn’t tell you if that makes any difference.

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