Tuesdays with Dorie: My Favorite Pecan Pie {Catch-up}

I ran out of gas on Thursday and Friday and missed my #HELLmonth posts. Don't worry, I was still baking. In fact I baked a lot... and I was making lots of trips up to SLC for work--teaching classes and more. It was fun but I never quite made it to my posting responsibilities.

The majority of my catch-up recipes lend themselves well to the Thanksgiving dessert table. I love this. This morning's post is yet another pie. But friends, it was the first pecan pie I have ever made and I wish I could bring it to Thanksgiving with me this year! (But alas, I have four TWD pies I'll be making so I don't have time for repeats. Next year for sure!)

Dorie's "My Favorite Pecan Pie" is ingenious! The pecan pie is not overly-sweet like most. In fact, it is quite refined with proper balance. It includes your usual ingredients like corn syrup, brown sugar, butter and pecans but then brilliance strikes in the form of bittersweet chocolate chunks, ground cinnamon, salt and espresso powder!

The chocolate and cinnamon truly make this special. I used my favorite local artisan chocolate, Amano Chocolate and it was amazing. Amano's Morobe was a perfect fit for this pecan pie, some wonderful citrus notes brought more complexity to the tongue.

I made two {gasp} substitutions, which normally I don't allow on the first time I try a recipe. Well I always substitute pero for espresso or coffee. But the other sub was in fact a bit of Xagave for corn syrup. See I ran out of corn syrup and I was in the middle actually baking it. So much for mis en place, right! Since I had been using Xagave in a lot of my cooking lately, I thought why not try it in this pecan pie. Well..it worked. It would be fun to use all agave instead of corn syrup next time I try my hand at pecan pie.

My Favorite Pecan Pie was originally posted on December 22, 2009. You can find the recipe on page 327 of Baking from My Home to Yours or on Beth's blog, Someone's in the Kitchen.

Wondering what all this Tuesdays with Dorie stuff is? Read this post. This month the group is posting two recipes each Tuesday to make sure we finish the cookbook before the end of the year. I'm taking it a bit further and posting two posts per day to catch up on all my make-up baking adventures. I call it #HELLmonth. Wish me luck.

PS: My Project Domestication Facebook page is up.