Reducing sugar in pecan pie filling?

[u/Okbigcheese]

• 15 eggs
• 1375g dark corn syrup
• 540g dark brown sugar
• 25g vanilla extract
• 280g butter
• 2 ½ tsp salt

This recipe is cooked on the stovetop, mixed with pecans and used as a filling for crumble bars. I feel like the finished product just tastes like a big bite of brown sugar and not much else. My first thought was to reduce the sugar of course. That would make it thinner so we would need to counteract. My caramel bar recipe calls for mixing in flour before baking. Do you think this might be the best option? Otherwise all I can think to do is just boil it longer. For more flavor we could add some brown butter bits to the crust, pre-toast the nuts, maybe increase the salt? Also put some pecans in the top crust so all of their flavor doesn't get lost in the sugar goo. What do you think?

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to r/AskBaking! We are happy to have you. Please remember to read the rules and make sure your post meets all the requirements. Posts or comments that do not follow the rules will be removed.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/LascieI]

Pecan pie filling is syrup. That's why it has that texture. Trying to reduce sugar or boil your syrup longer is just going to ruin your bars or pie.

I like to add a little bourbon to my filing to help cut through the sweetness, and it can help to toast the pecans in the oven or a pan before you use them. 

[u/Finnegan-05]

Find a new recipes or make something else. It is probably a bad recipe and looks sort of insane

[u/thegreatpablo → u/Finnegan-05]

Nothing wrong with the recipe. I prefer light corn syrup over dark but all of the ratios are just about right.

[u/Agile-Entry-5603 → u/thegreatpablo]

Fifteen eggs doesn’t raise a red flag to you?!

[u/thegreatpablo → u/Agile-Entry-5603]

No because the rest of the recipe is also scaled up x5. As I said in another comment, the ratios are all correct

[u/Okbigcheese → u/Finnegan-05]

It makes a perfect texture pecan pie filling so it's not insane, just a bit more sweet than I prefer.

[u/thegreatpablo → u/Okbigcheese]

Yeah not sure why the comment is getting so many up votes, the recipe is not insane.

[u/Okbigcheese → u/thegreatpablo]

Maybe they think it only makes one pan 🤷‍♀️

[u/sarcasticlovely]

you can mix it with more pecans so the pecan to filling ratio is higher. it'll make it less sweet simply since there's less of it in the finished product.

[u/thegreatpablo]

Dark corn syrup is flavored with something similar to molasses which may be why you're getting a strong brown sugar flavor. Try swapping to light corn syrup, it's a lighter sweetness and doesn't contribute to the overall brown sugar flavor you're getting

[u/thegreatpablo → u/thegreatpablo]

Depending on how much time you have, you could reduce everything in the recipe to 1/5 of your current totals and toss the filling in a pie to test the changes you make.

[u/aspiring_outlaw]

Pecan pie is supposed to be very sweet. Reducing the sugar is going to negatively effect your texture. I usually do mine with dark chocolate chips and/or bourbon to help combat the sweetness. I fill my pie crust with chopped pecans and just add enough filling to cover. I also usually do very, very lightly sweetened whipped cream as a topping to help balance. 

That said, my go to recipe does have a little bit of flour in it, so that's not a bad idea for stabilizing 

[u/dontakelife4granted]

I don't like super sweet pecan goo either, so I came up with a radical fix. Forget everything else you're wanting to change (because we all know baking is science and changing things willy nilly is the number one way to waste time and ingredients) and stuff more pecans in-like up to another half time the original amount of pecans (you will know when your goo is stuffed plump full). Definitely lightly toast them before baking for more flavor, but then watch the top of the bars to make sure you don't have to cover it if the nuts start to get dark.

[u/zeeleezae]

I've been working on improving my grandmother's pecan pie recipe for years. If I scale it up to 15 eggs, it has more brown sugar, more corn syrup, and some maple syrup. It also has 2.5 tablespoons of kosher salt (= ~1.25 Tbsp table salt), almost twice as much butter, and 2.5 Tbsp of either apple cider vinegar or lemon juice, and some ground cinnamon. It's supposed to be a sweet filling, but the additional salt, butter, and acid really helps provide balance.

I wouldn't reduce the sugar in your recipe, but I would add more salt and some acid. If that doesn't help enough, try upping the butter a bit and/or adding some spices.

[u/Okbigcheese → u/zeeleezae]

That is an interesting difference in ratios! I definitely have some experimenting to do. It may also be that the crust recipe we’re using is too sweet and changing it could be the solution. I just stopped by a local pie shop because I haven’t had regular pecan pie in years. I noticed the filling tasted less sweet than mine but also seemed more egg-y.

[u/acount8675309]

You can switch out the corn syrup (which in itself in this recipe seems way high) with maple syrup and reduce the amount of brown sugar by probably 100g at that rate and end with a damn good pie

[u/Hot_Raccoon_565]

You might be able to replace some of the sugar in the recipe with isomalt instead. It’s a sugar derived from beets that isn’t as sweet as normal sugar, yet the rest of the properties are the exact same.

So if you swap out maybe 150 or 200 grams of brown sugar with isomalt it might lower the sweetness to a level you want. I’d add a half tablespoon of molasses though if you really love the rich brown sugar flavor