Thanksgiving Pies

As you are all well aware, last week was Thanksgiving, that uniquely American holiday not celebrated in South Africa.  While we did carry on the holiday tradition here, we did it on Sunday afternoon rather than Thanksgiving day.  We celebrated at another American family's house with 2 turkeys, 2 hams, 21 adults, and about 10 children.  I was asked to bake a couple of chocolate bourbon pecan pies, which became my speciality back in Boston. 

Baking the pies here didn't seem like a big issue as they grow pecans here and they are available in stores.  All chocolate bourbon pecan pie is is pecans, eggs, sugar, unsweetened chocolate, bourbon, corn syrup, and a pie crust.  Here the difficulty would be the unsweetened chocolate, corn syrup, and pie crust.

I decided to do a test run as I was going to use a South African branded baking chocolate, a substitute for the corn syrup (simple syrup mixed with cream of tartar), and a homemade pie crust.  The test run was less than successful.  The pie crust on the bottom didn't get crisp, the pie filling was too goopy, the chocolate flavor wasn't rich enough, and Caroline thought that it didn't have enough bourbon flavor.  I was glad that I hadn't served that mess to guests.

A homemade pre-baked and browned crust just waiting for the filling.  (Note that the irregular shape of the crust adds to the homemade appeal,  The more irregular, the more appealing the pie is.  This crust just tops the homemade appeal scale.)

For round 2, I made some changes.  I pre-baked the pie crust before adding the filling for the final bake.  Baking the crusts this way solved the problem of the undercooked crusts.  The other substitutsions that I made was to use Illovo Golden Syrup, a sugar cane syrup made by Illovo Sugar Cane Ltd. here in South Africa and Baker's Unsweetened Chocolate.  The irony was that when I went to look for the golden syrup at the local Spar's Grocery store, I came across a bottle of Caro's Corn Syrup.  The difference in price between the two sweetener's was about 500% with the imported bottle of corn syrup costing about $8, so that was a no-brainer.

The final product.  Two nice looking pies!

I couldn't have been happier with the final results.  The crusts were crisp and flaky, the filling had a nice non-goopy consistency, it had a nice rich chocolate flavor, but Caroline still thought they didn't have enough bourbon flavor.  (Perhaps, she should just enjoy a shot with her pie!)

Caroline also made a pumpkin pie.  No cans of pumpkin filling, but they do sell peeled and cubed pumpkin in the stores.  Caroline made a delicious filling to pair with one of my pie crusts and the results were fabulous.

This pie tasted as good as it looked!

The pumpkin pie was the favorite at the dinner and before we knew it, the pie plate was empty.  For some reason, I kept getting the compliments for the pie.  Poor Caroline!