- [John] Hey, I'm John Kanell,
and today on Preppy Kitchen we're making some pecan pie bars that are simply amazing. So let's get started. First off, set your oven to 350, and while it warms up, you might as well add
in two cups of pecans onto a baking sheet. We're gonna give these a rough chop later, but they're gonna be
so much more delicious if they're lightly toasted. So, about 10 minutes in the oven you can give them a mix halfway through. The base of our pecan pie bars is an amazing shortbread. It's so easy to make, but you do need to melt
12 tablespoons of butter. The base of our pecan pie bars comes from a crisp and
buttery shortbread crust. To make that crisp, buttery crust, you want 12 tablespoons of butter that we're gonna melt up. Pop that into the microwave, 40 seconds at 50% power, and then ten second bursts after that until it's nice and melted. I like to cover this
with the butter paper, so any butter explosion that happens is less explodey. Into a large bowl, it's over a scale. I'm adding 2 1/2 cups, or 300 grams of all-purpose flour. Shortbread is so easy to make, and it's a delicious base for all kinds of amazing desserts. Pecan pie is so good, but it can be very sweet, like so sweet. You have like one bite and say, oh my gosh, it's delicious. But then you can't eat
anymore because it's so rich. These pecan pie bars are solving this, and by the way this is powdered sugar, 2/3 of a cup, 66 grams. This recipe solves that problem by giving you just the right proportion of pecans, pecan pie filling,
and that shortbread crust, and the shortbread is
not too sweet at all. These have very little sugar in there. Half a teaspoon of salt
to give you some balance. Little salty, sweet situation. Now we're gonna grab a whisk, say goodbye to our scale and give it a good mix. Just distribute all that
salt and powdered sugar. And this recipe, by the way, is so easy. Kids will love helping you make it. They can actually make it on their own. And it's not like a pie, where you have to really supervise and like worry about the
steps being just right. My butter is nice and
melty, no explosions. I'm gonna add all of that into my flour. Now grab a fork, and we're
gonna stir this together until it's a nice like
wet, crumbly mixture. This recipe is so delicious, and I really wish more
people knew about it, which might just be why I'm
making it on the channel. Hint hint. So you can see this comes
together really easily. Just mash any bits of stray
flour right into the butter. Yeah, if it's forming one giant lump, just kind of break it
apart with your fork. This looks great. It's ready to go into our
prepared 9 by 13 inch dish, which I didn't prepare yet. You wanna grab some parchment paper, and the key is for this
to come out easily. It can stick because that
pecan pie filling is sticky. So parchment paper will fix everything. I'm just gonna center it up, and give it four snips. If you're wondering why
this is called shortbread, short describes the texture. It's buttery and crisp, not chewy. And bread, because the Scottish
bakers who invented this wanted to avoid paying an
English tax on cookies, AKA biscuits. So they named this a
bread, which was not taxed. Smart, but I never would've
guessed in a million years that's why it was called that. Dump all of your shortbread out here. We want one nice, packed,
smooth, even layer. If you have any large lumps just break them up and
sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle. Now we're gonna pat
this into an even layer that's nice and smooth, and also pressed together. The shortbread needs some pressure so it's all compacted into a
layer that doesn't fall apart. If you're having kids help you make this wash those hands so thoroughly. A little tip for getting a smooth edge is to run a fork right along the bottom. It'll smooth everything out
and give you a nice even layer. This is ready to go into the oven. 350 for about 20 minutes, or until the edges are just taking on some beautiful golden color. In the meantime, we'll make our filling. My pecans came out of the
oven a few minutes ago, and now they're just warm
and not screaming hot. You can see they took
on a beautiful color. And I wanna point out,
in case you don't know. toasting your nuts is so
important, especially for pecans. It adds a wonderful depth of flavor and they even look prettier too. Giving this a really rough chop. I don't want to have
like whole pecans here, I also don't wanna have
tiny little pieces. I want like a nice, nice size chop. Think chocolate chip size. Chop, chop, chop. These can get set aside right now. Oh, I am so proud of
myself for not spilling. That normally ends in
disaster for some reason. Now we're gonna grab a big bowl and make that amazing,
gooey, delicious filling. This filling is so easy to make. And here's the deal. You want one and a half cups of something. What is that something? Well, you have a couple choices. This could be dark corn syrup. it could be Lyle's golden syrup. You can get both those at
the market, by the way. Or if you're feeling extra special, you could use maple syrup for this too. They're all delicious and you can even use a
combination of those three. Basically you want like a
nice, rich, inverted sugar which is what all three of these are. The one that tastes the best
is of course, maple syrup. Golden syrup and dark corn syrup, they're both gonna be pretty similar. And I'll point out this is
not high fructose corn syrup, which is like super sweet. It's regular corn syrup which is like somewhat sweet. For balance, I'm adding one
stingy teaspoon of salt. If you're using a fine grain
salt, an iodized salt, or both, I would use half a
teaspoon or three quarters. They're extra salty. I also want four large
room temperature eggs. Crack those right in. If you're worried about shells, crack 'em into a separate bowl. So we're basically making
a really easy, like, sugar custard base that's gonna cook up and be
just the right consistency filled with crunchy, amazing pecans over that buttery shortbread crust. I'm gonna add a tablespoon of vanilla, and it's gonna give me a
wonderful depth of flavor, but you don't have to use vanilla. You could use bourbon
instead, or a nice rum. Those are also gonna give
you wonderful flavors and the alcohol will burn off. Vanilla mind you, is vodka. It's vodka or bourbon infused with a ton of vanilla flavor. I don't think a lot of people realize that if you're using vanilla,
you're using alcohol. So, if you wanna avoid
that, you could use like, maybe two teaspoons of vanilla bean paste. It'll give you the vanilla flavor but it's not made with alcohol. I'm also adding in two
thirds of a cup, or 140 grams of brown sugar. You could choose light or dark. Okay, we're gonna mix this in. And FYI, it's not gonna be sweet if you don't add the sugar in. I may have made a batch and forgotten to add the sugar in. We'll never know. Maybe it happened, maybe it didn't. Whisk it up until it's nice and smooth. You can see it has a beautiful color now. My gosh. So nice. And we're gonna add flour
to help stabilize this, but I don't wanna add
the flour in right now while I'm whisking away, because that could activate
the gluten in the flour and just make my consistency
a little bit less wonderful. Just really get the bottom of that bowl, and make sure there's no
clumps of eggs, or salt, or anything lingering around. I have 40 grams, or a third
of a cup of all purpose flour. I'm gonna sift it in while I mix just until the flour is combined. No over mixing for us. It looks really pretty, too. My crust is out of the oven and screeching hot so carefully putting it on a trivet. I have one last step for the filling and that's to add my pecans. So just pour those in. Ooh, give them a nice mix. Ooh, look how good that looks. Delicious. Any finishing touches
you want to add are fine. And now we're gonna pour this right over our warm shortbread crust. You'll probably end up
with some piles of pecans. Just smooth those out so
everyone gets an equal number of delicious pecans in every bite. This is ready to go into the oven, 350 for about 30 minutes. You want the center to be just set. It'll finish firming up as it cools and you don't wanna over bake them. That would be sad. In you go. My pecan pie bars are out of the oven. You need to them cool, and if you want a perfect, beautiful cut you can chill them. If you don't care about them, and you want them ooey gooey, amazing, you get them slightly warm. Ah, if you want a nice clean cut, go ahead and score the
top with a serrated knife, and then give it a nice chop. Look at that filling. Oh my gosh, it is gooey and amazing. I've been looking so forward to this. Crunchy on top, crisp and buttery underneath, in gooey and amazing on the inside. These are a must make recipe. I could eat these all day long and I will. I hope you get a chance
to make this recipe. And if you like this video,
check out my fall playlist.
