Amaretto Chocolate Pecan Pie

Amaretto Chocolate Pecan Pie w/ Chocolate Sauce & Vanilla Ice Cream

I had a couple of goals for my Thanksgiving this year which included trying classics like cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, & pecan pie. Being terribly ill & stuck in my apartment the week before Thanksgiving, I watched hours upon hours of television and realized I was missing out on these traditional dishes.

I had one major problem with traditional pecan pie recipes - that layer of super sweet corn syrupy goop between the crust and the pecans.  I'm not a fan of straight up sweet.  Luckily after browsing for recipes I discovered that chocolate pecan pie was another option.  Chocolate & pecans? Yummy!

Tyler Florence has well rated recipe for Bourbon and Chocolate Pecan Pie that I used for my pecan pie. I don't keep bourbon stocked in my bar so I went with Disaronno Amaretto instead (because I love amaretto & chocolate together) and I used twice the amount of unsweetened chocolate (a full 4oz Hershey's Unsweetened Chocolate Baking Bar).  Honestly, there is so much sugar/corn syrup in this that I think you need the extra unsweetened chocolate to cut through that sweetness (especially if you aren't from the South & used to living on pure sugar, lol). I baked it for about 40-45 minutes and it came out fine, but if I make it again next year I am going with 35-40 minutes so it has a thicker gooey layer like pecan pie should.  Mine had a very thin layer of goo with a thick nearly brownie like layer on top with the pecans. I like chocolate goo, want more :-D

Cranberry Upside Down Bread

Perfect way to use the leftover cranberry sauce, yum!

For Thanksgiving I decided to make cranberry sauce this year. Believe it or not I never tried cranberry sauce and I just couldn't stomach trying the stuff from the can. It's so jiggly & corn syrupy... I saw Claire Robinson make a Spicy Cranberry Chutney on Food Network and used her recipe for my Thanksgiving cranberry sauce.  I cut the ingredients in half to make a smaller batch (and used only a 1/4 of the suggested lime juice amount).  Even with half of the recipe I still had a lot left over after Thanksgiving (small crowd) so I had to figure out what to do with it all.  Using it in an orange cake or muffin seemed like a good idea, but I ended up just putting it on the bottom of a pan, covering it with corn bread batter, baking it, & flipping it upside down like a pineapple upside down cake (which I also have yet to try...).