Whiskey-Pecan Pie: or, Unexpected normality

As Thanksgiving ends,  we at A Book of Cookrye go into winter hiding until the holidays are safely over. However, it was very amusing to see the retail industry frantically begging people to come out for Black Friday. After the industry stretched Black Friday into a weekend and then into half a month, people simply lost interest. 

But in the precious final weekend before every grocery trip comes with 5 versions of Santa Baby over the PA system, we went to a friend's gathering and brought this!

Whiskey-Pecan Pie 1 unbaked pie shell 1 cup sugar 1½ tsp cinnamon 1 pinch salt 3 eggs ¼ c whiskey 1 tsp vanilla 10 oz chopped pecans or pecan halves Heat oven to 350°. Whisk together the sugar, cinnamon, and salt, breaking up any spice-clumps. Then add the eggs all at the same time, and whisk very hard. Then beat in the whiskey and vanilla. Lastly, stir in the pecans. Pour into the pie shell. If the pecans land in a pile, spread them evenly with the back of a spoon. Bake 45 minutes. It's very good with whipped cream. Adapted from A Taste of Texas by Jane Trahey, 1949

This year seems to have brought on a wonderful shift in Thanksgiving: the spread of Friendsgivings. Until the last year or so, it seemed that people tended to promote Friendsgiving as an alternative holiday when one has deliberately severed oneself from one's rotten relations. However, the idea of Friendsgiving has apparently broadened to having a Thanksgiving gathering of friends at some point within a few days of the official holiday, regardless of whether one has a good family or not.

I think the pandemic caused the idea of Friendsgiving to expand beyond those fleeing their family. After a few years where people rarely managed to see each other, we are all collectively grabbing at the nearest excuse to feast with friends again. 

And so, a lot of my friends gathered together the weekend after Thanksgiving. I took the opportunity to revisit something from the Saint Patcaken: a Fireball pecan pie. It's not like I could bring such a pie to my family.

After we cut away the extra pie crust that hung over the edges of the pan, the rerolled trimmings were exactly enough to fill this miniature pie pan. I don't know what I will do with it, but it's reassuring to know that the freezer holds a single-serving pie shell for when the need strikes.

The baking aisle hasn't recovered from everyone frantically trying to figure out how to cook from scratch. Relevant to today's pie, the pecan pieces were sold out. But in a peculiar turn of events, the pecan halves were cheaper than the pieces would have been. Usually it's the other way around, probably because it's mechanically trickier to get pecans out of their shells intact.

As I hoped, the pie tasted like Fireball and pecans. The combination is better than you may think, and I don't even like whiskey. I was so happy to take this pie out from under a massive tower of cake and let it be its unfettered self.

As the pie baked, it formed a very nice, crisp-looking, crackly crust. I couldn't decide whether the pecans looked like an enticing promise of what lay within, or whether they looked like a pie full of beetles. Both options appealed to me.

Despite our previous lessons in properly resting a pie crust made in a food processor (lest the gluten in it cause the whole crust to tighten like a trampoline as it bakes), I only gave this crust about half an hour in the refrigerator after rolling it out. That proved insufficient, and half of the pie pulled away from the pan. But the crust was sturdy as it was springy. Note how it didn't crack or leak at all.

As many of us know, you must remove a piece of a pie when setting it on a dessert table. People often hesitate to be the first to plunge a knife into an intact dessert. But once it's already been cut, no one minds helping themselves. This was as good an opportunity as any to taste-test the pie and see whether I was about to discreetly take it back to the car.

I said "Hmm. It tastes more normal than I thought it would." I then found out that people get nervous when one says that about one's own pies.

I don't know that I would have tasted the whiskey had I not already known it was there. It was a very lovely pecan pie, but it wasn't what I set out to make. With that said, a large chunk of it was gone by the time I left.

I only have one minor postscript to add. For my family's Thanksgiving, I took Gabby's advice that "Lemon bars are always good." Well, it seems lemon is always the most popular thing on any Thanksgiving dessert table. One person brought a lemon meringue pie that was completely demolished. You can see its nearly-empty pan above and slightly to the left of mine. (Another person brought two apple pies that were still warm from their oven, which is a level of last-minute haste I may someday rise to.) 

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!