The Succulent Plant Page   goes to   rjh header   goes to
rjh   
border border
border

My favourite recipe

Nothing to do with cacti and succulents .....
          ..... except that pecan pies are popular at social events.

Pecan Pie

  • 3 eggs
  • 1 cup maple syrup
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 3 tablespoons melted butter
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
  • 1 cup finely chopped* pecan nuts
  • 12-16 whole pecan nuts
  • 1 partly baked (230 C for 8 minutes) pie shell

Beat eggs and add maple syrup, sugar, salt, butter, vanilla and chopped nuts. This step can be carried out conveniently by blending the ingredients together in a liquidizer. Pour into pie shell , decorate with whole pecan nuts, and bake at 160 C for 45 - 50 minutes.
 
One can substitute cheaper ingredients: margarine instead of butter, corn syrup instead of maple syrup, peanuts for some of the pecans, but the pie will not taste as nice.
 
* Note that "chopped nuts" is in the American sense, meaning ground or blended nuts, rather than chopped with a knife.

Maple Syrup

In the U.K. there is usually little choice, but try to get proper maple syrup and not "maple syrup flavoured" grades which are not the real thing.
However, I am told that maple syrup is graded by color. The "higher" grades, Fancy and A, are pale and have little flavor. Vermont Grade C has been cooked longer and is more caramelized, which gives it the darker color and perhaps it's also a bit more concentrated. Tastes like there's a tree somewhere in its ancestry, where the top grades taste mostly like sugar.
 
border
border