Today on Sugar Spun Run, I'll be showing you how to make pecan pie bars.
Hey Sugar Spun Bakers, Sam here!
And today, I am so excited to be sharing another carefully tested,
well researched, and perfected recipe.
These pecan pie bars are perfect for Thanksgiving
when you don't feel like making a full-fledged pecan pie,
they make enough to feed a crowd, and they are really easy to make.
I think you're going to just love these, so let's go ahead and get started.
Now the first thing that you want to do is get your oven preheating to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Now for the bottom layer of our pecan pie bars,
I am doing—it's a cookie layer
that's not too sweet. It's very similar to a shortbread.
And when I was developing this recipe, I was very intentional at that
I wanted the bottom layer of the bars to be nice and crisp,
and I did not want it to get soggy, which is something that can sometimes happen with pecan pie.
Now we are going to be making this in our food processor.
While I have recipe notes on how you can do this without a food processor,
I really recommend using one. It's going to make your life so much easier.
Now in the basement of your food processor, we are going to combine two
and a third cups of all-purpose flour and 1/2 cup of firmly packed, light brown
sugar. We’ll also add one and a half teaspoons of cornstarch,
which is a little bit. It's one of the ingredients that helps the bottom layer of these bars
stay nice and dry. We’re also going to be adding 3/4 teaspoon of table salt.
Now, go ahead and pop your lid on there, and we're just briefly going to pulse everything together.
You just want to make sure these ingredients are nicely combined.
The next ingredient you need is one cup of unsalted butter, and this should be nice and cold.
We're going to cut this into small pieces.
And I actually popped my butter in the freezer
for about 10-15 minutes before I started filming today's video,
so mine’s really cold, which is why I'm using a sharp knife and not a butter knife.
Now once you have it cut into small pieces,
we're just going to scatter these evenly, pretty much evenly, over the top of your flour mixture.
All right, pop that lid right back on there, and we are going to pulse everything together again,
just until the butter is cut into our flour mixture.
All right, so I want to show you very specifically what this looks like.
As you can see, the butter is—there’s still discernible pieces of butter left.
I'd say some of these nice, pebbly pieces of butter,
some of these are even the size of like a chocolate chip or a pea.
That's exactly what we're looking
for here. So we can add our last ingredient, which is two tablespoons of heavy cream.
I'll just pour that right over top. And this dough is going to look a lot different from other doughs
you've seen in the past. It's going to be very, very crumbly
when it's finished or when it's ready to be pressed into your baking pan.
So what we're going to do is we're going to pulse this until the mixture is crumbly,
but combined enough that it clings together and I'll show you just what that looks like.
Now for me, this is usually about twenty five, or thirty, one second pulses.
All right, let's take a look at this dough. So, at first glance, you may think it's not finished yet.
It's very dry. It's very sandy looking,
but, if I take my fingers and just press the dough between my thumb
and my fingers, you can see it's clinging together. It's holding together just fine.
So I don't really want to go any further than this.
I'm actually going to go ahead and take this off
my food processor. And we're going to press it into our pan,
so let's just talk about that pan real quickly.
You're going to be baking today's recipe in a 13 by 9 pan.
And as you can see, I've lined my with parchment paper.
If you don't have parchment paper, you can use foil instead.
You could bake these in the pan with no liner at all,
but what I like to do is I've basically made a sling,
so you can see I've got a little parchment paper hanging over each end here.
So, once these are finished baking and have cooled,
I can just lift them out of the pan and very easily and neatly cut them.
All right, now let's take our super crumbly dough here,
and we're just going to dump it right into the pan. Now
using the back of a spoon, just press it into an
even layer into the pan, and this should be pretty easy to do.
It's going to take a little bit of pressure, a little bit of effort,
but it should come together quite nicely.
You should be able to make a nice even layer. Now
if we were to process this dough any further
and you were to have a dough that looks a lot more like a cookie dough, that would still work,
but it is going to be so, so much harder for you to press that into the baking pan than it is
if you stop the dough at this point when it's still crumbly.
All right, this is perfect. We have a nice even layer.
I'm going to pop this in my 350 degrees Fahrenheit oven, where it will need to bake for about 25 to
30 minutes. Now while that crust is baking,
we can go ahead and prepare our pecan pie filling.
Now the first thing I like to do when making this filling is I like to melt my butter.
You need 1/4 cup of unsalted butter
for this recipe, and I like to melt it first
and then I'll just set it aside
and let it cool down a little bit because I don't like to add it to my filling
when it's too hot—let it rest there.
Now in a large bowl, we are going to combine one cup of light brown sugar.
And this is firmly packed, light brown sugar. If you'd like,
you can make these bars a little bit richer by using half a cup of light
brown sugar and half a cup of dark brown sugar.
We're also going to add three tablespoons of all-purpose flour.
Now, I like to grab my whisk at this point
and just kind of break up that brown sugar and whisk together the brown sugar and the flour.
I just want to break up any clumps in the brown sugar and make sure this is nicely combined.
Now you'll need three large eggs for today's recipe—
mine are at room temperature, I would recommend you use room temperature as well,
just going to make everything combined a little bit easier.
And I'm just going to crack these here and lightly beat them.
We’ll add these in with our sugar and flour mixture.
Now along with that, I have one cup of light corn syrup.
This is not the same as high fructose corn syrup.
I just like to point that out because some people get a little upset when they see corn syrup,
but corn syrup is really a classic and very important ingredient in pecan pie.
It just doesn't seem right to make it without corn syrup. We’ll also be adding one
and a half teaspoons of vanilla extract,
which will give these bars a nice rich flavor, and 3/4 teaspoon
of salt. Now just stir everything together until these ingredients are completely combined.
And then don't forget about your butter. We're going to be adding this last.
Mine actually cooled a little bit more than I wanted it to, but that's better than it being too warm
when you add it. Stir this in.
You want a nicely combined batter. Finally,
you are going to need your pecans. I have two and a half cups of chopped pecans here.
You can buy them already chopped or you can just coarsely chop them yourself.
We'll just toss those in there and stir until everything is completely combined.
Now, any minute now, your crust should be finished baking.
Now when it's done, it should be just beginning to turn a light,
golden brown color on top. And we are going to add our pecan
pie filling on top of that. And you do want to do this while it's still nice and warm.
You don't need to let the crust cool. Now, if you're filling has been sitting for a little bit,
of course, you're going to want to stir that again so that the ingredients are nicely distributed.
And then, we will just pour this over our crust.
And then those pecans sometimes like to stay in one place,
so I just like to use a spatula to make sure that topping is nicely distributed.
All right, now this is going to go back in our 350 degrees Fahrenheit oven,
where it's going to need to bake for about another 25 to 30 minutes.
Now, you'll know it's finished when if you jiggle the pan,
the center should not jiggle at all, it should be completely set.
Now, the toughest part about these bars is that you need to let them cool
completely. I feel, in my house,
this usually takes about 3 to 4 hours for them to completely set.
Sometimes I'll just make them the day before, it's even better if they can sit
overnight. Now I do have a pan that I prepared last night in preparation for today's video,
so let's go ahead and cut into those so you can see how these bars look.
And you can see my nice sling here is coming in handy
because I can just lift these bars out and it just—personal preference
I guess—I like how it makes it so much easier to cut the bars.
And my pan is much cleaner too. All right,
let's go ahead and dig in. And look,
I want you to take note of how nice and crisp
that bottom layer is right there. It's not soggy.
It's not soft. That was exactly what I was looking for
when I developed this recipe. It took me a while to get it. And that is how you make these
incredible pecan pie bars. I really think you're going to love this one,
and if you try it out, please let me know what you think.
I always love hearing from you. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you next time.
Mhmm