Pecans And Baking

Well, we have lived for over 4 years in this house and this Monday our lawn crew came and they asked if they would be allowed to pick a little bit pecans under our huge tree after the mowing. Of course, why not, we never did. I guess we assumed that we got nothing this year since last year the shells were empty due to severe drought. And the year must have been tough for squirrels too, we have much less of them than we used to. We happened to talk with our neighbor about the pecans and he just said that the pecans are beautiful this year, so I decided to go see if there was any left under the tree and I was in luck. I collected about two to three gallons of shells and very few actually were either empty or damaged, they might have been from last year for what we know.

Suddenly I wanted to bake a pecan pie and I had never baked one before. I asked my friends in Facebook for a good recipe and Catie Doman graciously shared her blue ribbon winning recipe. Keep your eyes peeled, I will share it with you with her permission. I went back to get some more pecans and kept jumping up to reach the ones up on the lowest branches too. I just wanted to make sure that I had enough for a pie in case they end up being bad ones. I was in luck again. I think I could bake thirty pies out of them. Better safe than sorry is what I'm thinking.

So I had most of the ingredients at home but wanted to make my baking as RV'ish as possible and I think I would use ready made crust to save time while RV'ing. And since I am trying to learn to take shortcuts, I decided it was good time to start using the half ready products. I am originally from Finland and we make everything from scratch and I need to learn to simplify my cooking a lot in order to enjoy it better. So here is the recipe for the filling, I used Pillsbury pie crust and I still have half of it left, since it has two crusts in it. I can make another one as soon as this one runs out, which is probably later on tonight.

Fresh from the oven, hot and still puffy!

Catie's Blue Ribbon Winning Pecan Pie:

1/2 cup of sugar

1 cup of Karo dark syrup
1 cup of pecans

3 eggs

4 tbs butter (which I forgot, still came out good)

1 tsp vanilla

1/8 tsp salt

Pillsbury pie crust or home made crust.

Mix the ingredients and pour onto the crust. Bake 10 mins in 400F and then 35 mins in 300F. You can probably make it prettier with nice edge and not forgetting the stuff out of it. But at least I do have a reason to make another pie. It is pretty yummy, make two at the same time so you don't have to be baking all the time.

Just imagine the stick of butter in the picture, I am sure it will be even
 tastier  with it.

YUM!