Honeyed Browned-Butter Pecan or Hazelnut Pie

8 devastatingly rich slices  

What makes this rendition of this Southern classic dessert, more confection than pie, soooo good? Browning the butter? The touch of honey? Make it and see, and do try the two variations which follow. Yes, it's shockingly high in all that bad-good stuff, but eaten once in awhile it will add to, not subtract from, your life.

Pecan is the nut everyone knows and loves in nut pies, but CD would like to urge you to expand your horizons. Almonds are divine, and, to my taste, somehow Christmas-y. (You can see one, dead center, in the photograph to the left, taken at one of the inn's holiday dessert bacchanalias, in 1990). 

But hazelnuts may just be the penultimate. So penultimate that when I entered my hazelnut version of this in a contest sponsored by the Hazelnut Board, I won a thousand dollars. 

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter

3/4 cup light corn syrup

1/4 cup honey

1 cup sugar

3 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 cup chopped pecans, almonds, or hazelnuts

9-inch pie shell, unbaked

1 cup heavy cream, whipped, optional, for garnish  

1.      Preheat oven to 425. Over low to medium heat, cook butter in a saucepan, watching closely but not stirring, until golden brown, about 5 to 8 minutes. Do not burn. Pour browned butter into bowl and set aside.  

2.      .In food processor, blend corn syrup, honey, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and salt until smooth. Add browned butter; blend again. Add pecans and process with just a few quick on-off pulses.  

3.      Pour mixture into pie shell. Bake at 425 for 12 minutes; lower heat to 325; bake another 40 minutes. Let cool on rack. Serve, at room temperature, with a dollop of whipped cream on each slice.

            NOTE: center of pie will still seem a bit liquid when removed from oven; it sets up further as it cools. Let cool completely; serve with a generous puff of real whipped cream.

Variation:  Vermont-style Browned-Butter Maple-Walnut Pie combines maple pies from my girlhood summers in Vermont with the browned-butter technique and proportions above. Follow the recipe above, but cut the corn syrup to ¼ cup and omit the honey. Add ¾ cup Grade B (Vermont Grade A dark amber)  maple syrup. Substitute 1 cup granulated pure maple sugar (order it from Butternut Mountain Farms, Johnson, Vermont, 800-828-2376) for the regular sugar, and use walnuts, or, if you can get them, butternuts --- the common name for an Eastern walnut variety, white walnuts --- for the pecans. You must be a maple lover to get this pie; but I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t and didn’t.  

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