Pellet Smoker Cooking: Grizzly Bear Pie

Here I am doing another dessert! My sweet tooth must be aching. I seen this recipe on Saveur.com & just had to try it. A little different take on pecan pie. It has walnuts instead of pecans in it. I had a crust left from my Peach Cobbler so that was another excuse to try this pie. We are having leftover beef pot roast tonight so baking the pie was something to keep me busy. I really should be doing daily exercises but I don’t like that kind of busy!

Reading the recipe it said to use a lightly prebaked pie crust, but there were no directions on temps & times. I went to the net for directions, now that looked like a lot of trouble, place some dry beans on the crust to hold it in place & bake for 30 to 40 min total? I went to the Pioneer Womans site to see how she did her pecan pies. She does not prebake her crust, so I figure if Ree does not prebake her crust ole Smokin Don is not going to prebake his crust either!

I heated up my sugar, honey & butter filling until the butter was melted & just starting to boil then set aside to cool to room temp. I preheated my oven to 350 deg & toasted the walnuts for 10 minutes. I placed them in the bottom of the pie crust. I whisked the cream & eggs into the filling & poured over the walnuts. Into the oven to bake for 40 to 50 minutes as the recipe called for.

I checked it at 40 min. & the crust was getting pretty brown but the filling didn’t look set enough. I had read where you should cover the crust with foil to keep it from getting overdone and you could do this part way into the baking. Unless you have heat resistant fingers you’re not going to get that crust covered well. At best I just laid foil strips across the crust & baked for 10 more minutes. It looks good even with a little over brown on the crust. I am thinking; that crust would be burnt if I had prebaked my pie crust!

I can’t wait until after supper dessert time! My wife does not like nuts in most desserts so after saving a couple of pieces out for my Mother I might have the rest of the pie to myself!

I just ate a piece of the pie with a scoop of Bryers vanilla ice cream. It is so rich you need the ice cream with it. It was so good I wanted a second piece, but so rich I couldn’t eat another piece! Unbelievable!

Link to the recipe

Cooking the filling