Last July, a group of food bloggers began Project Pastry Queen. The idea was to cook their way through Rebecca Rather's first cookbook titled, no surprise, "The Pastry Queen". I stumbled across the "PPQ" blog quite by accident and it was one of the reasons I decided to join the blogosphere. The cookbook was already a favorite part of my library (I had bought it 5 years ago when I stopped by the Rather Sweet Bakery & Cafe in Fredericksburg, TX). Each week a different recipe is chosen, everyone tries it out, and results are posted on Sunday. I am thrilled to be joining in the fun! Rebecca has published 2 more cookbooks and I'm hopeful PPQ will extend to blog about those too.
This week Beth from The Powdered Plum chose Texas Pecan Pie Bars, a variation of the southern staple of Pecan Pie. Mark's side of the family was getting together for Labor Day. We were also celebrating our nephew's graduation from college. If your family is like ours, you NEVER have enough food at these events (wink - wink)!! Still, I decided to halve the recipe and I am glad I did. It made plenty in my 2 qt. baking dish, and the family LOVED them! The crust is more like a shortbread instead of pie crust. The filling calls for coconut - which I added even though I'm not a fan of it. It wasn't too bad!
A variation of the recipe is to make Chocolate-Pecan Pie Bars by melting 4 ounces of bittersweet chocolate and stirring it into the filling mixture. I chose to decorate the top of the bars with pecan halves and a drizzle of chocolate. To make the drizzle I melted 1/4 cup bittersweet chocolate with 1 1/2 teaspoons of shortening in my microwave.
Head over to The Powdered Plum for the full recipe. You can also see what other members thought of the pecan bars at Project Pastry Queen
p.s. Thought I'd edit my post and add this. Please pray for Texas, especially Central Texas. As we left our family celebration to return home on Sunday evening, we smelled smoke in the air. Upon returning to Austin we found that there are at least 8 different fires all around us. This story shows video of the worst hit areas. You can check out pictures of our dry conditions here.
Welcome to the group! I loved that you made the chocolate version, can't wait to try that next time.
ReplyDeleteWe sure could have used some of that tropical storm rain that everyone else on the Gulf Coast got. It's kind of an odd feeling, praying for a storm like that. But that's what I did :)
Welcome to PPQ! I was so tempted to make the chocolate version - I'm definitely going to try it next time I make these!
ReplyDeleteYum! The chocolate version looks fantastic! <3
ReplyDeleteThanks Shawnda, Josie & Beth! I'm so glad I found PPQ!!
ReplyDeleteThese look wonderful and I love a *shortbread* type crust. Glad you joined PPQ and looking forward to your next post about it.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Congratulations to your nephew! Best wishes to him.
hey - LOVE this cookbook. Had a quick Q about this particular recipe - did anyone else have a problem getting the pecan pie filling to "behave"? It tends to ooze after being cut - am I doing something wrong? Any suggestions would be much appreciated.
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