Christmas Countdown: Golden Syrup Pecan Bites and One Baking Fail

When Amy lived in New Orleans, her then-boyfriend's family had a pecan tree in the backyard. The nuts would drop around Thanksgiving, and they had a special tool for picking them off the ground. It was a favorite after-turkey-dinner activity, and since then, pecans just seem to say "holidays." We already made some lovely Pecan Sea-Salt Drops, but we had pecans left over from that experiment, so we decided to make some pecan bites. 

You've noticed us using corn syrup in some of our candy recipes, and frankly, we don't have an issue with that. But Whole Foods carries Lyle's Golden Syrup, a iconic product from the UK that we've heard of but never tried. When we tasted it, we thought of pancakes, waffles and pecan pie. And that's where our pecan bites came from. With a crumbly crust and golden, nutty top, these are sure to please. 

Golden Syrup Pecan Bites

Ingredients:

Cooking spray

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup packed brown sugar

2 sticks unsalted butter

5 large eggs

1 cup Lyle's Golden Syrup

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1 pinch of salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup coarsely chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 9x11 baking pan with cooking spray. Combine flour and brown sugar. Add butter, a tablespoon at a time, into the flour/brown sugar mixture and crumble with your hands until it looks crumbly. Press into prepared baking pan and bake for 10 minutes. Combine eggs, syrup, salt and vanilla and mix well. Fold in pecans. Pour mixture over crust. Reduce oven to 275 and bake for 50 minutes, until set and golden brown. Cut into large bars or bite-sized squares.

And of course, we did have one baking fail this Christmas. We attempted to make Bon Appetit's Bourbon Sea-Salt Caramels. We are pretty confident we followed the directions but they just did not set up. The most disappointing thing is that we sprinkled ours with a beautiful espresso sea salt our neighbors D and J gave us, so it was a real waste of both time and good ingredients. Here's what a part of it ended up looking like after we tried to cut it into pieces. Yikes!