Every year, I make a pecan pie for Thanksgiving. Until recently, I just followed the standard recipe from the Karo® Syrup label, but I got bored with it, so I started experimenting.

The first year, I added some semi-sweet chocolate chips. That went over well, but it wasn’t quite what I wanted. So the last few years, I’ve been experimenting with mint, too, and now I’ve come up with what I think is the right balance:

Chocolate Peppermint Pecan Pie

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs, slightly beaten
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup light Karo Syrup
• 2 tablespoons melted butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cup pecans
• 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract
• 9-inch frozen pie crust (I use Mrs. Smith’s)

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Remove pie crust from freezer
3. Mix first five ingredients in medium bowl and stir until blended
4. Stir in pecans, chocolate chips, and peppermint extract
5. Pour into pie crust
6. Bake at 350 degrees about 50-55 minutes, until a knife inserted halfway between center and edge comes out clean
7. Cool on wire rack

The chocolate chips do not melt, so some bites will be more chocolaty than others, but with a half-cup of chips, you won’t be deprived. (This year, I only used 1/3 cup, which wasn’t quite enough.)

This recipe is healthier than a normal pecan pie, because you get the flavonoids in semi-sweet chocolate. So eat hearty!

(It would probably make more sense to include the peppermint extract along with the vanilla extract, but I first added the peppermint as a last-second addition to a pie in progress, so I’ve always done it at the end.)

We have salmon for dinner fairly often, and sometimes the aroma lives on after dinner is finished. I just found this pointer on 43 Folders, and it seems like it’s worth a try next time we run into the problem.