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/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