Li’l Pecan Pies — A Sweet Ending to the First Real Day of Fall

September. The light has changed properly now and the mornings are cool enough to have coffee on my apartment steps again, which I missed over the summer. I have been doing it every morning this week, ten minutes before I leave for work, just the coffee and the morning air and Biscuit watching from the window with his usual complicated feelings about the outdoors.

At the daycare, a new toddler named River started on Tuesday. She is tiny for her age and has enormous brown eyes and she looked at the painting station on her first day with a kind of longing that I recognized immediately. The longing for the thing before you have permission to have it. I went over to her before circle time and put a brush in her hand and showed her the paint jars and said: what color do you want? She looked at the colors for a long time and then she said: all of them. I said: that is a good choice. She painted all morning. Her painting is on the wall next to the door.

I have been making fall soups again now that September has given me permission. First soup of the season on Sunday: butternut squash with cream and thyme, the version I have been making for two years that is now my version, with the extra thyme and the light hand with the cream. Tyler came over and ate two bowls and said: this means fall is here. I said yes. He said: good. He said it the way he says it when he means it entirely. Good.

After Tyler finished his second bowl of butternut squash soup and said “good” the way he means it entirely, I wanted something small and sweet to round out the evening — something that felt as deliberate and seasonal as the soup itself. These Li’l Pecan Pies are what I reached for: little individual rounds of warm, caramel-dark filling and buttery crust that feel like fall in your hand. They’re the kind of thing you make when you want the season to linger just a little longer.

Li’l Pecan Pies

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 25 min | Total Time: 45 min | Servings: 24 mini pies

Ingredients

• 1 package (14.1 oz) refrigerated pie crusts (2 crusts)
• 3 large eggs
• 1 cup light corn syrup
• 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups pecan halves, roughly chopped

Instructions

1. Preheat oven. Heat your oven to 350°F. Lightly grease two standard 12-cup muffin tins.
2. Cut the crusts. Unroll the pie crusts on a lightly floured surface. Using a 3-inch round cutter, cut out 24 circles, re-rolling scraps as needed.
3. Form the shells. Press one dough circle gently into each muffin cup, easing it up the sides to form a small shell. Refrigerate while you make the filling.
4. Mix the filling. In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, corn syrup, brown sugar, melted butter, vanilla, and salt until smooth and well combined.
5. Add the pecans. Stir the chopped pecans into the filling mixture, distributing them evenly.
6. Fill the shells. Remove the muffin tins from the refrigerator. Spoon about 1 tablespoon of filling into each crust shell, filling each no more than 3/4 full to prevent overflow.
7. Bake. Bake for 22—25 minutes, until the filling is puffed and set and the crust edges are lightly golden. The centers may still look slightly soft — they will firm as they cool.
8. Cool and remove. Let the pies cool in the tins for 10 minutes, then carefully run a thin knife around each edge and lift them out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 185 | Protein: 2g | Fat: 10g | Carbs: 24g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 95mg