Recipe – Honey Pie

For all of those wondering, YES we did get our new car, and we took a few days off driving around town to break it in. Yesterday was a holiday here and Normita took Monday off to make an extra-long weekend. We would have like to go out of town for 4 days, but since we did not get the car until Monday evening, we could not do that. This will have to wait for another weekend.

We decided to celebrate the coming of spring and I researched what was traditional for this time of the year. It seems that egg dishes are the norm and also desserts with honey in them. I prepare a nice smoked salmon quiche for the main course, and I will post the recipe in coming weeks. For desserts I instantly thought about Baklava, but I did not have the patience to bake some as the weather was too nice and the new car was beckoning. I then decided to create a nice honey pie recipe. It turned out stunning so I decided to share it with you. It is very easy to prepare and I baked it before leaving for the day, yesterday morning. Once it was out of the oven and cooled I left it on the counter with a clean dish clothe on top, so it was ready for when we returned.

You can bake this easy pie in a prepared uncooked pie shell, prepare you own dough, use some frozen puff pastry, or do like I did, buy some fresh puff pastry at the supermarket and roll your own pie shell in a few minutes.

An easy trick there is to use a large plastic cutting board so that the puff pastry dough does not stick. Make sure that you put enough flour on both the board and the top of the dough before rolling. With light pressure roll a square of dough to a size that is about 2-3 inches bigger than you pie plate. While rolling the dough flip it over a few times and dust it and the board with flour every time you do so. It only takes a few minutes and I find this much better than most regular prepared pie shells. I prefer to use a sturdy non-stick-coated metal pie plate as they conduct heat better than glass ones.

Ingredients

1 1/4 cup of honey
4 large eggs, beaten
3 tbs butter
1 tbs vanilla extract
2 tbs Scotch
1 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground dried ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
9" unbaked deep pie shell

Preparation

1. In a saucepan heat the honey until it boils, then retire from the heat.
2. Slowly add the beaten eggs while stirring continually so as not to create an omelet.
3. Add the butter and stir until melted and well incorporated.
4. Add vanilla, Scotch, and spices. Stir until you have an homogeneous mixture.
5. Fold in the chopped walnuts.
6. Pour the mixture into your prepared pie shell.
7. Bake in the middle of a preheated 350F oven for about 30 minutes, or until the center of the pie is set.
8. Cool down on a rack before serving.

Lucito