Recipe of the Week -- Tar Heel Pie

[sylke]

There is a severe dearth of good restaurants in this area. I wanted to celebrate getting into my grad school program of choice, so instead of going out, we got steaks (mmm, filet mignon), made whipped potatoes, sautéed some shallots and baby bella mushrooms, and made pie. I'm thinking I might actually like this pie better than pecan pie, which Nathan knows I love so much he makes it for me for my birthday instead of cake. I think for future birthdays I want to switch to this simple chocolatey concoction--it still has pecans in it! As my mother reminded me when I called for the recipe and ingredients, "This is not a diet pie." But when celebrating, calories don't count. ;)

Tar Heel Pie

Ingredients:
1 cup chocolate chips (I like semi-sweet, but use your favorite)
1 stick butter, melted
1 cup chopped pecans
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup plain flour
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar[1]
2 eggs, beaten
uncooked pie shell

Preheat oven to 350°F. Pour warm butter over chocolate chips and stir. They're supposed to get kinda gooey but not melt completely. Blend together rest of ingredients, then fold in chocolate chip mixture. This gives you a very thick chocolatey paste the consistancy of peanut butter almost. Pour/spread into unbaked pie shell.

Now, the recipe says to bake for 30-40 minutes, but it will almost certainly need the full 40 minutes, and might well need to go longer. The chocolate chips mean a knife is never going to come out of the center clean, but check the side and see if it's started coming away from the crust. That means it's about as done as it's supposed to get. Very good for chocolate cravings. Very bad for diets.

[1] We used dark brown sugar because that's what we had available of the stronger flavor, but it's probably still delicious with any brown sugar.


I think I'm going to have pie for lunch...