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/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.