This year my pecan tree has had a bumper crop. Now, the weather has turned cold and the once green leaves are changing to brown and dropping to the ground, but not before we collected bucket loads of nuts!

In a previous post, I have already waxed lyrical in total admiration of my garden, (yes, I do that sometimes, nature just gets to me), and you can see here the beautiful nuts growing happily away in my garden. Clicking on the photos will enlarge them.

In the days when I first made pecan pie I didn’t have a pecan tree in my garden, I simply bought a packet of pecans off the supermarket shelf. Now I have a beautifully matured tree and I personally find it is a far more satisfying experience to grow, collect and shell my own!

Being the creature of habit that I am I have used the same pecan pie recipe forever. I know there are other recipes out there, but what can I say? When I make up this recipe I could eat the whole pie to myself! Okay, maybe a slight exaggeration there. 😉

As far as comfort food goes, this is up there with the best of them!

Pecan Pie

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C.

Pastry ~ ½ cup shelled pecans

160g butter

1/3 cup caster sugar

2 cups plain flour

1 egg, beaten

Grind the pecans to a fine meal, in a food processor fitted with a steel blade, being careful not to over process the nuts to a paste.

Cream together the butter and sugar and stir in the ground pecans and flour. Add the beaten egg and blend together to form a soft dough.

Wrap the dough in plastic film and refrigerate for 20 minutes, roll out and line a greased, fluted, 20-23cm flan tin.

Filling ~ 190g butter

1 cup brown sugar

½ cup warmed honey

6 eggs

¾ cup of shelled pecans

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then add the warmed honey and eggs, beating together thoroughly.

Pour the filling evenly into the pastry case and sprinkle the whole pecans over the top of the egg mixture.

Bake for 10 minutes at 200 degrees, then reduce heat to 190 degrees and continue baking for approximately 20 minutes extra, or until filling is set.

Decorate the tart with 90g of melted chocolate and serve with cream or ice cream.

The memory of the day I was given this recipe by an old friend has just come back to me and in this day and age is rather amusing!

As I am copying the recipe to share here, from a stained, yellowing sheet of paper, I am reminded of my friend letting me try out her latest office gadget, on loan from her boss, to type out the recipe.

It was a marvellous gizmo, which had a tiny screen above the typewriter keyboard, showing the words as they were typed into the machine. When satisfied there weren’t any mistakes, a simple hit of a button would type out your work….

It was an early day word processor! Can you believe it? (Okay, you can stop laughing now…it wasn’t that long ago…really!)