Greetings! For this weeks pie, I baked a toasted-pecan pie. It’s a relaxing day to bake here in Austin. It’s cloudy and cold and the NFL playoffs are in full swing.

Yummy Pecan Pie

I’m hoping  it’ll be the Packers and the Jets in the Super Bowl.

The crust:

1 1/3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 stick of chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 in. cubes
4 tbsp. (or more) ice-cold water

Blend the flour and the salt in a processor for about 10 seconds. Add the butter, using on/off in turns until the mixture looks like a coarse meal. My favorite part of baking is doing battle with the food processor. Also note, it is not a good idea to stick a knife in an active food processor…

Add 4 tbsp. of cold water until moist clumps form.Add 1 tbsp. at a time if the mix is dry. Gather the dough in a ball, flatten, and wrap in plastic wrap. refrigerate for at least one hour to chill.

The filling:

3 cups pecans, divided
6 large eggs
2 cups sugar
2 cups dark corn syrup
1/2 stick unsalted, melted butter
1 tbsp. vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. salt

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Coarsely chop 2 cups of pecans and hold in reserve. Spread the remaining cup of pecans on a rimmed baking sheet. Toast in oven until nuts are aromatic and dark in color, about 12 minutes. Cool the pecans completely and grind finely in a processor. Maintain your oven temperature.

Roll out your dough disk on a lightly floured surface to about 13 inches around. Transfer to a 10 inch glass pie dish (or in my case, a 9 inch dish. I don’t have a 10 inch). Fold the dough underhang, forming a high standing rim; crimp edges decoratively. Freeze for 20 minutes while you pull together your filling…

Whisk the eggs in a large bowl until frothy. Add sugar, corn syrup, melted butter, vanilla, salt and ground toasted pecans; whisk until blended. Mix in chopped pecans. Pull the crust from the freezer and fill the crust.

Bake the pie until the crust is golden brown and filling is puffed and set (the center of the pie may move slightly when shaken), about an hour and 10 minutes. Transfer to rack and let cool at least 3 hours.

Serve slightly warm or at room temperature with fresh whipped cream.

I ended up with quite a bit more filling than I could fit into the pie crust. I think it’s because the pie dish I have is smaller than what the recipe called for. So I grabbed a

ready-made pie crust and made another pie. I’ll be bringing that one to work on Monday:)