All that (I guess) led me to my old (yes, printed on paper) cookbooks as I was trying to finalize the menu of a meal I am wanting to take to a church family with a new baby. While perusing my create-your-own cookbook I acquired in 1980 while living in Rockdale, Texas, I happened upon a recipe, written in my 20's-something handwriting, entitled "Granny's Pecan Pie".
Generations to come should know that my Granny, Ada Ratliff Conner, won a blue ribbon at the Houston Fair (which even then was a BIG deal) with this recipe. Of course, when you reproduce this recipe yourself and it just tastes like pecan pie, you should remember that at these kind of shows presentation is---I started to say 99%, but it's probably not quite that high. Maybe only 98%---of the score in the winning entry. I remember that my Granny told me how she chose the perfect pecan halves (My Uncle Gene ran a pecan orchard in Houston at the time.) and placed them to form some sort of decorative design on the top. May sound easy, but you should just try to place those pecan halves very perfectly in an unbaked pie shell and then pour goo over them and have it all come out of the oven perfectly... I never acheived good results. My poor results might just be due to my inept ability, but her far superior results are probably (at least in part) due to her very experienced hand.
I should really look this up before publishing, but Granny was 1 out of 7 or 8 girls in her family. Granny was the "tomboy" of the bunch, but her job in the family kitchen was making the desserts. She was an extremely great pie maker!! (Those pie safes they used to have? I'm thinking the Ratliff family might have had one...but maybe not...) At Thanksgiving or Christmas when I was a kid, there were always at least 10 pies!
I don't have a picture of Granny with a pie, or even a picture of one of her pies...(They were all consumed!)...but I do happen to have this picture of her with Rachel and Ira. It is dated September 1980. She was a very lovely lady; she remained that way even in her last days.
But here is the recipe:
Granny's Pecan Pie
3/4 c Karo (she used light)
1 cup sugar (she used Imperial)
3 eggs
3 T butter (I'm pretty sure she used REAL butter!)
1 cup pecans
1 t vanilla
Unbaked pie shell
Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.
---please note that I have the 30 minutes marked out in my cookbook and have written 50 minutes.
....and there are actually no further instructions with the recipe. I do know that the butter was melted. The pecans were laid out in a design and then the goo was poured over it. I recollect her talking about how carefully she had to pour goo over the pecan halves so they wouldn't shift in the pouring.
I also know that her pie shells were definitely NOT of the frozen variety. Crisco pie crusts were the rage of the day. That recipe (and the recipe I have alongside the pie recipe) is:
Crisco Pie Crust
1 1/3 cup flour
1/2 t salt
1/2 cup Crisco
3 T ice cold water
Combine flour and salt. Cut in Crisco. Sprinkle with water, 1 Tablespoon at a time. Toss with a fork. Work dough into a firm ball. (and the rest you'll have to take from there! Google and YouTube are great resources!)
And that's all I've got.
Maybe when you're feeling nostalgic you'll try out this recipe. If you, like I finally did, don't want to try the fancy designs or give up on trying, you can always use chopped pecans or pecan pieces. Just place them on the bottom of the unbaked pie shell and then pour the goo on top. This is a very forgiving method of just making a yummy pie. Please note that it's always best with a little "cream" (what Granny called ice cream) on top!
