Pecan Pie

Armed with our homemade pastry dough, there are a zillion possibilities in front of us (give or take). One recipe I really wanted to test out with this pastry dough was a pecan pie, something I'd never made before but always struck me as pretty involved. As it turns out, it's a little time-consuming to prepare, but not too complicated at all. So, let's check out how to make a classic pecan pie.



For this pecan pie, I used a recipe from Epicurious, which is usually my go-to site when I need a reliable, basic recipe to work from. Okay, let's start out by turning our collective ovens to 350º. (I finally figured out the keyboard shortcut for the "degrees" symbol--it's option-0 if you have a Mac! That was pretty exciting for me.)



Here's my favorite Beach City Cooking stock photo of a lightly floured surface.



Remove your pastry dough from the plastic wrap, let it set out for a short while until it's softened enough to roll out.



Lightly dust your rolling pin with flour, then roll out your pastry dough to about 1/4'' or so thickness.



I had a little bit of a pastry dough malfunction when trying to get the rolled-out dough into the pie pan. If you want to avoid such troubles, fold in the four corners of your rolled-out dough, place into your pie pan, and pull the folded-in corners back out over your pie pan's edges. Once that's all set, you'll also want to poke your pastry dough all over with the tines of a fork.



You'll need 6 tbsp of unsalted butter--



--and 3/4 cup light corn syrup for this recipe. We actually have light corn syrup in our kitchen, but only because our cat, Peanut, is diabetic, and if you have a diabetic cat, you're supposed to have some light corn syrup on hand in case your cat ever goes into ketones.



Okay, start out by melting your butter in a small or medium saucepan.



Once the butter's melted, add 1 1/4 cups light brown sugar--



--and stir until well-incorporated.



Next, whisk in the corn syrup and 2 tsp vanilla extract.



Then you'll need 1/2 tsp of orange zest.



Whisk that in, too.



In a separate mixing bowl, crack in three eggs--



--and give them a good whisk.



Slowly stir your buttery, syrupy mixture into the beaten eggs.



You'll need two cups of pecan halves--you can just go ahead and dump those into your prepared pie crust. See, this is the fun part. It's all coming together.



Pour your homemade syrup into your homemade pie crust. Hey, check that out. It's starting to look like something! Okay, throw this in the oven (careful, not literally!) and let it cook until the the filling is fully set, at least 50 minutes to 1 hr. This one took 1 hr 10. A good way to see if your pie's done to is to shake it a little (with your oven mitts on, of course!). If it shakes around, it's not quite there yet. If it doesn't, it's literally all set.



Once it's set, let it cool and enjoy! Preferably with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.



Thanks for stopping by Beach City Cooking, and I'll see you all tomorrow for another edition of Windy City Cooking. Have a great night, and stay cool!