I placed!!!

My standard spiel about running is that I intend to keep doing it until I place in my age group. Well, I placed yesterday! Sadly, not in running. In pie-baking, of all things. I won the "nut/other" category in the Cville Pie Fest with my "Cheap Drunk Nut Pie." I can't believe it! Unfortunately, I was too sick to attend the event - my third illness in as many weeks. So there's been a lot more baking than running going on at my house.

Well, next weekend I am racing again. I think. I signed up a couple months ago, but realized that I've never gotten any kind of confirmation whatsoever that I am, in fact, registered for the Real Girls Run 6K next Saturday. Maybe I'll look in to that. With all the non-training I've been doing lately, even starting the race, let alone finishing it, is going to be a bigger challenge than I bargained for. I'm feeling much better, and would love to go for a run this afternoon, but I'm stuck at home with napping kids while The Husband is at work. Sigh.

So, in the meantime, here's my recipe for AWARD WINNING^TM Cheap Drunk Nut Pie.

Crust (This recipe is pretty much cribbed from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook - nothing fancy here. Though I do add a little salt where they don't, since I'm making a super-sweet pie.):
Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups flour, sifted
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup shortening
4 Tbsp ice water

Directions:
Pulse flour, salt, and shortening in food processor until it looks like coarse crumbs. Scrape sides occasionally if necessary. Add ice water all at once and process until dough forms into a ball. Again, scrape sides if necessary. Pat dough ball into a disk, wrap in waxed paper, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 450.

Roll out crust and place into pie plate. Flute the edge, or do whatever decorative treatment you'd like. Prick liberally with a fork, especially where the sides of the plate meet the bottom. Line with parchment paper and fill with weights - dried beans or rice work well for this. Press into corners to prevent crust from lifting up during baking. Bake at 450 for about 8 minutes.

Optional: Just before adding filling to crust, use a pastry brush to brush an egg wash (1 beaten yolk with a splash of milk) on the edges and sides of crust. This will give the crust a nice golden color once baked.

Filling (this recipe is the result of lots of research and testing, and passed the ultimate taste test - my 3 year old like it!):
Ingredients:
4-5 eggs (I get mine from the farmer's market, and am not always there at the crack of dawn, so I sometimes end up with medium eggs instead of large)
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 cup dark corn syrup
6 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1 Tbsp cheap vodka* OR bourbon OR lemon juice
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 cup raw, unsalted pecan halves

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350. Spread pecan halves on a cookie sheet in a single layer. Bake for approx 5 minutes, stir, and bake for 5 more minutes. Watch nuts carefully and be sure they don't scorch.

Once the nuts cool, grind half of them in a food processor to form a meal**, and set aside.

Preheat oven to 375.

In a large bowl, beat eggs with the brown sugar till combined. Add corn syrup, melted butter, vodka, and vinegar and mix well. Add ground pecans and stir till combined. Pour mixture into baked crust, reserving about 1-2 Tbsp in the bowl.

Put the remaining pecan halves into the bowl with the reserved filling and toss to coat. Arrange pecan halves on top of pie.

Bake at 375 for 45-50 minutes, or until filling is set. To prevent overbrowning of the crust, tent the edges with aluminum foil for all but the last 10 minutes of baking. Cool on a wire rack. Serve plain, or with Cool Whip or vanilla ice cream.


*A note about the cheap vodka: I heard that you can also use a little vanilla extract for part of this ingredient. Long story short, I happened to end up with a large quantity of vanilla beans, and have been making my own vanilla extract by soaking the beans in cheap vodka. This process takes months, and my extract is still mostly vodka. Really, really cheap vodka. So, having neither bourbon, nor vanilla extract, and discovering that the only lemon in my fridge was a dessiccated fossil, I used my not-quite-extracted vanilla vodka. You might even find that commercially available vanilla vodka works for you, but I've never tried it, as it is not the cheapest vodka at the liquor store.

**A note about the pecan meal - I find it makes the filling really nice and firm, and not as slimy/gooey as pecan pies usually are. It also cuts the sweetness a bit. But with a cup of corn syrup and a cup of brown sugar, who am I kidding. You can go with chopped pecans, rather than ground, but the chopped ones tend to float to the surface while baking, so they don't end up binding with the filling like the ground ones do.

Edit: Ummm, eeek! I accidentally double the amount of nuts, because I had made *two* pies for the pie fest. I'm sure it wouldn't suck w/2 cups of nuts, but it really only requires 1. I fixed it in the recipe above.