**UPDATED 11/30/2020 WITH TASTE TEST RESULTS**
Thanksgiving will be here very soon, and it’s time to put that oven to work on the baking. Pecan pie is in high-demand here this year and I have all of the ingredients…or do I???
I have NEVER baked Pecan Pie
Our family often relies on someone else making the classic recipe on the back of the Karo syrup bottle. This year, it’s up to me. I started by measuring out the borrowed (and not returned!) bottle of corn syrup only to find that it only contains half of what we need for the recipe. I call our corn syrup lender for more, but alas, they hadn’t replaced the bottle they’d given us when my son wanted to make his own candy corn.
Choice Time:
Do I go out and face the Thanksgiving Eve grocery store crowd OR attempt a new recipe for a crew expecting the tried and true? Well, I’m most certainly not going to the grocery store. Been there, done that, learned my lesson (more than once).
All of my go-to cookbooks Pecan Pie recipes called for corn syrup (boo!). So, diving online, I found this recipe at Little House Big Alaska who sourced a corn syrup free recipe from an older Betty Crocker cookbook. She has a pie crust recipe as well. However, I admit, I do not find joy in making pie crust. Instead, I utilized our go-to favorite gluten-free pie shell by Wholly Wholesome. I like this one mostly because it doesn’t contain corn and I know what all of the ingredients are.
Baking for the lactose, gluten, and corn intolerant
Because we try to eat gluten, dairy, and corn-free, new recipes don’t always hold up to the adjustments I make to them, and sometimes, they adjust amazingly. I made a couple of substitutions to the filling recipe as indicated below. This will have to finish baking, cool, and wait for tomorrow for an official review. Here is the recipe adjusted:
Could this be the best ever gluten-free, dairy and corn free Pecan Pie??
Notes
The asterisked ingredients indicate my substitutions from the original recipe.
Ingredients
- 1 prepared pie crust
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 1 Tbs gluten-free flour (I used Bob’s 1 to 1 GF) *
- pinch salt
- 1/2 cup melted coconut oil*
- 2 Tbs almond milk*
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 cup pecans
Instructions
- Mix all of your dry ingredients together, including the sugars
- Separately, mix all of the wet ingredients together
- Add wet ingredients to the mixed dry ingredients and stir until thoroughly mixed
- Gently stir or fold in pecans
- Pour into your pie crust shell
- Bake at 375 for 40 to 50 minutes
The results are in!! After pulling from the oven, and allowing the pie to cool, I was very discouraged by the big puddle of coconut oil that was between the foil pan containing the pie and the glass pan I used “just in case” of overflow in the oven. The exposed crust also looked pretty oily. I did not have particularly high hopes and was glad we had our classic fruit crisp available as back-up.
This turned out to be a huge hit. The texures were on point: crispy (not greasy) crust, caramelly custard, and a good candied crunch on top with the pecans. It was gone before bedtime. I do want to fiddle with the coconut oil amount or try with coconut butter instead. We will totally make this recipe again.
