Going Nuts for Breakfast

Crustless Pecan Pie

What do chestnuts, pecans, beech nuts, and hickory nuts all have in common? They’re all native to North America. While beech nuts and hickory nuts are hard to find since they’re usually foraged rather than farmed, chestnuts and pecans are relatively plentiful. Roasted chestnuts are especially findable around the holidays. (Although this Flourless Chocolate Chestnut Cake is delicious any time of the year.) Pecans, on the other hand, are findable year-round.

Where chestnuts are starchy and dry in nature — which makes them excellent in baked goods when dried and ground into flour — pecans are rich and buttery. That satisfying flavor and the high protein/fat content of pecans makes them an ideal ingredient for breakfasts that’ll stick with you all the way to lunch. (As opposed to sugary, refined cereals that will leave you feeling hungry and irritable by mid-morning and will have you reaching for more sugary junk to make it to lunch time. Break the cycle deliciously!)

Soaking the pecans, draining them, and then roasting them overnight will make them insanely buttery-tasting and isn’t very much work seeing as all of those steps are pretty passive: once you have the nuts situated, they can simply do their thing. But you can pan-toast the pecans at the last minute, too, if you want to skip the overnight soak. I think it’s much easier to do hands-off activities like soaking and roasting rather than pay-attention activities like toasting in a pan. (The more oily and buttery the nut, the more likely it is to over-toast and wind up burnt.) How you deal with your nuts is up to you.

Crustless Pecan Pie

8 oz. raw pecan halves (6 oz. or even 4 oz. would also work; I happen to be a nut about pecans and wanted to make a very pecan-y pecan pie)
1 T. sea salt (which sounds like a lot, but you’ll wind up rinsing most of it away)
6 dates, pitted and chopped
1/4 cup maple syrup
4 T. butter (half a stick), preferably from grass-fed cows
3 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
2 tsp. vanilla

The night before, place the pecans and salt in a small bowl and add enough cold water to cover the nuts. Leave them sit out on the counter overnight. The following day, rinse well and let drain for at least 5 minutes. Preheat oven to 200F. Spread the drained pecans out on a rimmed baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes or until the pecans are dry and brittle and break apart easily. (When they start to smell magnificently of roasting nuts, start checking them. This is the most enchanting scent ever — not even baking bread can beat it!) When the pecans are done, increase the heat to 350F.

Get out a 9″ glass pie pan. Place the dates, maple syrup, and butter in a small saucepan and heat over medium-low until the butter is melted. Raise the heat up a notch or two until the mixture is gently bubbling. Let simmer for 3 minutes, then remove from heat and whisk in eggs and vanilla. Whisk in the pecans. You can hand-break them into smaller bits or you can leave them as whole halves. I like the texture and look of the halves, so I do my best to keep them intact.

Pour the batter into the ungreased pie pan and bake for 30 minutes at 350F. Let baked pie cool at least 15 minutes before cutting into it. Leftover pie can be refrigerated for up to 5 days.

Talk about the most lush breakfast imaginable! Especially when you consider that if you serve it in 4 generous portions (one-quarter of the pie makes a lasts-well-until-lunch breakfast), each portion only has 1 T. of maple syrup and 1 T. of butter. It doesn’t take much to play up pecans!

Enjoy!

Tags: breakfast, dates, dessert, gluten-free, maple syrup, pecan pie, pecans, toasted nuts, vanilla