Chocolate Pecan Pie

The history behind this pie … a few months ago, back in the late fall or early winter, one of Jared's co-worker's wife had a birthday.  Her husband (who works with Jared) asked me to make her a chocolate pecan pie for her birthday.  Since I had never made one before, I printed off several different recipes from online and scoured my cookbooks. I halved or quartered each recipe and then made mini pies (one of my favorite kitchen tools – whenever you have extra pie filling you can use these to make an extra pie or two so that you can try your creation before you bring it somewhere). I tried some goofy recipes.  One of the recipes called for chocolate chips to be sprinkled over the top.  That one tasted like a pecan pie with chocolate chips sprinkled over the top. Some recipes called for as little as one cup of pecans and you couldn't even taste the pecans.  The worst recipes were ones that called for over 1 cup of sugar.  BLEH.  They were way too sweet.  I would send samples with Jared to work and they would tell me which recipes they liked and why.

After a few tries, we ended up settling on a recipe from my southern cookbook, with the addition of unsweetened chocolate squares and removing some of the sugar (both ideas from other recipes).  It was also one of the only recipes that called for vanilla, which I thought added to the flavor. 

I hope you enjoy this as much as Jared and his co-workers.  Oh, and the wife said this was one of the best birthday presents she had ever received.  :)

Ingredients

4 large eggs

2/3 cup sugar (recipe calls for 1 cup)

1 cup corn syrup

1-1/2 tsp flour

tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla

cup (½ stick) butter

2 cup pecans (I buy the broken pieces at Sams because they are cheaper than the whole ones and that way I don't have to chop them up for cookies, pies, or oatmeal)

1 pie crust (uncooked)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Beat eggs until foamy (2 – 4 minutes on med or high speed).

Mix sugar, corn syrup, flour, salt, and vanilla.

Melt butter and chocolate (I melt it in the microwave in a Pyrex measuring cup). Mix into rest of ingredients.

Stir in pecans.

Pour into pie crust.

Bake 40 – 60 minutes until filling is just soft in the middle when the pie is shaken and the crust is golden brown.

Cool on wire rack or chill.