Friends
1 1/2 cup nuts — finely ground
3 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons butter — room temperature
Filling:
1 cup dark corn syrup
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup nut butter
1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 eggs
1 cup lightly salted nuts — chopped
whipped cream to garnish (optional but desirable)
9-inch pie
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For crust – Heat oven to 400, combine ingredients and mix well. Press into bottom
and up sides of pie plate. Bake for about 9 minutes and cool on wire rack.
For filling – Combine corn syrup, sugar, nut butter and vanilla in the top of a double
boiler, over, not in, boiling water and, stirring often, mix well together until
hot (200 degrees). Beat eggs and whisk about 1/4 cup of nut butter mixture into
eggs to temper. Pour egg mixture into top of double boiler, whisking, and cook
until thickened, about 10 minutes, but do not boil or eggs will curdle. Pour into
pie shell, sprinkle chopped nuts on top and chill for 4 hours before cutting.
Serve with too much whipped cream on top and running down the sides.
NOTES: The idea here is to make a nut crust and fill it with any nut butter (creamy or
crunchy) filling, and top it with chopped nuts.
It works with any kind of nuts (except black walnuts – much too strongly flavored unless used very, very sparingly) and even combinations of different kinds of nuts. Think of a macadamia,
cashew, hickory pie. Peanut, hazelnut, Brazil nut pie. Walnut, almond, sunflower seed pie. Or almond, almond, almond pie.