CHOCOLATE PECAN PIE is a
welcome shake-up to your usual pecan
pie—still traditional but with a fun
twist. It’s not a complicated idea: Put
some chocolate and pecans into a pie
crust (usually prebaked); pour in a filling
of eggs, brown sugar, and corn syrup;
and bake. The nuts float to the surface
to create a crunchy top layer while the
filling (a translucent custard) firms up
into a silky, sliceable texture.
After making several recipes for this
pie, the challenges were clear. Most
fillings were much too sweet. Some con-
tained only a sprinkling of nuts; others
didn’t fully lean into the chocolate and
had a just few chips thrown into the fill-
ing. A few became disappointing puddles
of syrup, while others were too fudgy,
like a brownie pie with nuts. I wanted a
creamy, balanced chocolate filling that
held its shape plus a crisp and buttery
crust and crunchy pecans for satisfying
textural contrast.
Luckily for me, I had a great starting
point: Our recipe for an easy all-butter
pie crust is a cinch to work with and
tastes amazing. A gentle parbaking
ensured that the crust would stay crisp
once filled.
For the filling, I knew I had to keep
the sweetness level in check. To do
so, I looked at the amounts of brown
sugar and corn syrup in most pecan
pies—often at least 1 cup of each—and
dropped them down to ¾ cup of each.
I also turned to unsweetened chocolate
to showcase complex, slightly bitter,
rich chocolate notes and balance the
filling’s flavor. Just 2 ounces of unsweet-
ened chocolate melted with butter (for
additional richness) made a luxurious,
cohesive chocolate filling when com-
bined with the base of eggs and sugar.
Chopping the pecans made it easier to
cut nice slices, and toasting the nuts
maximized their flavor and kept them
from becoming spongy in the filling.
If you’ve ever made a cheesecake,
regular pecan pie, or a custard pie, you
know that these pies can be difficult to
bake—just how jiggly is “jiggly in the
center,” anyway? After several days and
dozens of pies, I found that the pie was
perfectly done after just over an hour on
the bottom rack of a 325-degree oven.
At this point, the center is still a little
jiggly, but there are more concrete cues
to doneness: The top layer will crack
a bit and the filling will register 185 to
190 degrees on an instant-read ther-
mometer. No more guesswork on when
to pull the pie for a perfectly smooth
and silky filling.
Could this pie be any more irresist-
ible? Yes. A quick bourbon-infused
whipped cream dolloped on each slice
took it over the top.Chocolate
Pecan Pie
We love pecan pie, but we were
looking for something more. by Cecelia Jenkins