Kentucky Bourbon Pecan Pie

I’ve never made pecan pie before. Which is odd because I really like a good pecan pie and cringe when I have a bad one. So it seems I should have tried my hand at making one (or more) to learn what makes a good pie. Since one of my assignments was the “other” pie for Thanksgiving, other than pumpkin, that is, I decided to give it a try. Lucky for me I used the recipe from The Dahlia Bakery Cookbook so my very first pie was great!

The filling in the Kentucky Bourbon Pecan Pie is rich but not too sweet like some pecan pies are. The molasses and bourbon in the recipe add depth and balance the sugar. Toasting the pecans results in a nuttier flavor. The filling was really easy to pull together.

I even decided to try the suggested pastry recipe instead of my normal go-to recipe. The pastry was pretty time intensive, because there is a lot of chilling at various steps along the way. But it’s really good and would have been even better if I didn’t make an error while blind baking the shell – I somehow turned off the heat when I placed the shell in the oven. Crazy! When I realized what I’d done I had to get the oven back up to temperature and then continue baking. Of course all the time spent keeping the pastry cold before placing it in the oven went down the drain. But even with my error it was still rather flaky, if a bit crispy, too. You can also see that I didn’t get the crust properly anchored to the pan – that’s why the crust is not covering the rim of the pie plate. Not all the filling will fit in the pie crust if it shrinks, but I don’t really stress out over that. I just bake the leftover filling in a little ramekin and save it as a treat for myself – there are positive aspects to making mistakes sometimes!

The only thing I might do differently next time is try to squeeze in a few more nuts – but maybe not. I need to think about that a little more.

If you have a baker or would-be baker in the family, this cookbook would make a nice holiday gift. In the meantime you can find the pie recipe here.