Happy Thanksgiving to our friends across the pond! I hope you’re having a lovely day and enjoying some time with family and a lot of food, of course. Inspired by the incredible food of this American holiday, I decided to try my hand at making some mini versions of a good old pecan pie.

These sweet, sticky beauties tasted absolutely delicious, but perhaps haven’t been fairly represented by my presentation or photography skills in this post. In a bit of a happy accident, I over-filled the pastry cases, meaning that the pecan filling spilled out over the edges a little. I personally love the sticky, toffee crust that you get when this happens, so much so that I might aim for this next I make these pies! Also, the winter evening crept up on me as these were cooking so I wasn’t left with much natural light, but I thought I’d try to embrace that and work with some deeper shadows and intensity for these photos.

The nutty centres bursting with pecan and oozy caramel went down a storm when I took these into work. They worked really well as mini pies, warm or cold, and I reckon my mini pecan pies could be a great alternative at Christmas for people not so fond of mince pies.

Mini Pecan Pies Recipe

Ingredients

• Plain flour (for rolling pastry)
• 1 pack Jus-Rol shortcrust pastry
• 100g unsalted butter (plus a little extra for greasing)
• 150g light soft brown sugar
• 150g golden syrup
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tbsp whole milk
• 2 eggs
• 200g pecan halves

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease a muffin tin.
2. Roll out the pastry and cut into discs to fit your muffin tin with a tiny bit of extra sticking out at the top. Place the discs into your muffin tin and pop in the freezer to chill while you make the filling.
3. In a pan, melt the butter and combine with the sugar and golden syrup. Once all combined, stir in the vanilla extract. Leave to cool slightly before gradually stirring in the milk and lightly beaten egg.
4. Toast the nuts in a pan until you can smell a slight nutty aroma, and be careful not to burn them. Keep som whole ones aside to top your pies – I looked for smaller ones that had a nice shape and about 3-4 per pie. Chop the rest.
5. Get your pastry cases back out of the freezer and put a layer of chopped nuts in the bottom – it’s up to you whether you deliberately overfill them 😉 Using a tablespoon, pour over the syrup so it covers the nuts. Put your whole nuts on top and cover with more syrup until just below the top of the pastry (less if you want even smarter pies).
6. Bake for about 30 minutes or until the filling is set, the pastry is golden, and the top is cracking slightly.