It has been only a couple days since I opened the Cooking For Engineer's Community Forums, and we're already getting some interesting posts, tips, and recipes. One of the ones that caught my eye was this Chocolate Pecan Pie recipe posted by ScatKat~ (Eric). I thought I'd give it a test and share with everyone the results.

Eric's recipe made two to three pies, so the first thing I needed to do was effectively halve the recipe. The new list of ingredients became 4 tablespoons of butter, 1/2 cup dark brown sugar, a large egg, 1/2 cup 100% pure maple syrup, 6 oz. pecans broken up by hand, and 6 oz. semi-sweet chocolate. I decided that since we're interested in testing fillings here, I would take the easy way out and use a store bought frozen pie crust.


Eric uses Ghirardelli's Double Chocolate chips in his recipe and warns against the use of milk chocolate. (Double Chocolate is Ghirardelli's branding for bittersweet chocolate for baking.) I was picking up the necessary ingredients at my local supermarket (Save Mart) on the way home from work and was surprised to find that they do not carry bittersweet chocolate chips at all. I picked up a bag of Guittard's Semi-Sweet Baking Chips and thus deviated from Eric's recipe a little (or maybe a lot).

First, I creamed the butter and brown sugar together.


Then I added an egg and mixed until it was fully integrated.


I scraped the bowl down once and added maple syrup. A few more seconds and my Kitchenaid stand mixer had the mixture smooth and consistent.


After removing the bowl from the mixer, I poured in the halved pecans and stirred by hand with a spatula. Then I added the chocolate chips and stirred and folded until the pecans and chips were evenly dispersed, about ten strokes.


The mixture is then poured into the pie crust and leveled. Normally, I would blind bake the crust to ensure that it doesn't get soggy. (Blind baking is where you bake the crust without filling to harden the crust. This gives the crust more structural support to handle a wet filling so it doesn't fall apart or soak up too much liquid before the filling is baked.) Eric's recipe didn't mention this and called for a fairly high heat of 375°F so I did not blind bake the crust.


I then baked the pie in my oven at 375°F until the filling set. I checked the filling by holding the pie on both sides and twisting gently to spin the pie pan. A set filling should not move on the outside and jiggle on the inside (like Jell-O). The pie was done after 45 minutes (just like Eric said).


Taste results: The pie is not your traditional pecan pie. This pie is quite chocolatey and less sweet than pecan pies that I've had from bakeries (which I felt was overwhelmingly sweet). I brought the pie into work and it was gone before I knew it with people asking for seconds (but there was none to give out). So, maybe Eric's original recipe of two or three pies would have been better.

The general concensus was that the pie was very good and a welcome departure from the traditional pecan pie. The chocolate lover's especially liked the chocolate chips and some commented on the excellent flavor that the maple syrup introduced. I recommend trying this recipe!


Eric's Chocolate Pecan Pie

Preheat oven to 375°F
4 Tbs. butter	cream	mix	mix	stir	stir	pour & level	bake 375°F 45 min.
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 large egg
1/2 cup maple syrup
6 oz. pecans
6 oz. semi-sweet chocolate
1 pie crust

Copyright Michael Chu 2004