Rich, gooey, and impossibly fudgy, this secretly healthy chocolate pecan pie is surprisingly delicious and perfect for the holidays!
Of course chocolate.
Would you expect anything less from a chocolate covered blog?
This secretly healthy pecan pie is the perfect balance of gooey, chewy, rich, and sweet.
If you can’t stop eating the raw batter, you know a recipe’s going to be good!
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Above – Watch the video of making the chocolate pecan pie
How do you pronounce “pecan”? I always said it pee-can (like toucan) until I moved to Texas.
There, people told me I had it all wrong, and it was pee-cahn, or even puh-cahn.
They take it very seriously down here… kind of like the “sprinkles or jimmies” debate.
By the way, does anyone say “jimmies”? I’ve never met anyone who does!
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The first time I made this healthy chocolate pecan pie, I used Mori Nu firm silken tofu, which added incredible creaminess and depth, not to mention added protein!
But so many people have asked, over the years, for a soy-free version that I went back to the recipe and discovered you can also use an equal amount of raw cashew butter (or make your own by soaking cashews and then blending until smooth).
So the choice is yours!
Chocolate Pecan Pie
Ingredients
- 1 cup raw pecans, plus extras for garnish
- 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 2 tsp cornstarch or arrowroot
- 1/2 cup pure maple syrup, honey, or agave
- 1 tbsp sweetener of choice, or stevia equivalent
- 12.3 oz silken-firm tofu (Here's a soy free version: Vegan Pecan Pie)
- 2 tbsp molasses, or additional maple syrup
- 2 tbsp cocoa powder
- 3 tbsp melted chocolate chips, optional
Instructions
- Blend all ingredients, except pecans, in a food processor until very smooth. Then add the pecans and pulse a few times until they’re chopped. Pour into a prepared pie crust, and top with additional pecans if desired. Bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees, for 45 minutes. If you serve the pie immediately, it’ll be very gooey (not necessarily a bad thing). But if you let it chill in the fridge, it firms up quite nicely the longer it sits. The pie fills up a prepared graham-cracker crust. If your crust is bigger, you might want to make 1 and 1/2 servings or even double the recipe. I cut this pie into 9 slices for the party, but that was because people often prefer “taste-size” slices at parties with many desserts. I’d say this recipe could comfortably serve six.View Nutrition Facts
Notes
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They say jimmies in Maryland. There’s even an ice cream stand near Frederick, MD called the Jimmy Cone. I had never heard of jimmies until I moved here!
I beg to differ. I grew up mere blocks from MD and never heard the term jimmy until college in Boston. It’s sprinkles all the way in the DC-area!
Definitely. Puh- cahn! It drives me insane that my husband is teaching our children to see. Pee- can and pa-JAM-as. You don’t get any puh cahn ice cream around here until you get you’re pa-jaw-mas on!!!
😉
YES, I agree.
Tried this as one of the dishes I prepared for my family’s Easter dinner, and ayup! you called it: no one believed me when I said it was healthy. Or at least most folks seemed really skeptical. So win! It went fast, long story short. And that’s inspite of the little adventure in making it. Using a my mum’s food processor from the 70s meant that part took just over half and hour till we’d achieved a satisfactory smoothness, and then I found out her oven is psychotic. 22 minutes in, I smelt something and…yeah, burning already.
Luckily the rest of the pie was fine when I cut a slice, I just dusted the top with some cinnamon and nutmeg to help cover the blackness, and filed off the burnt top edge of the crust to salvage the look and presented it in flanned out slices to focus attention on the unburnt interior. Which I had to stop my brother and mum from sampling it to extinction for “quality control”.
Wow, I thought MY food processor was old lol. It still works from the 70s?! Talk about a quality product! 😉
Just discovered your website. Wow! Can’t wait to try this and your chocolate pie!
I grew up in the Boston area, and we always called them jimmes. Pee-can’ is how we say the nut, though I’ve heard it as puh-can’. But we talk funny here anyway…. (drinking fountain is a bubbler; Coke, ginger ale, etc, are tonic; milk, syrup and ice cream all mixed together is a frappe. Oh well….)
The name “Jimmies” came from the Jimmy Fund, for cancer research in the Boston area, now the Dana Farber, it’s kind of a regional thing. I LOVE the chocolate jimmies. Recipe looks great, thanks for sharing.
I LOVE THIS! I love your whole website actually. Thanks for posting such wonderful recipes! I have a giant sweet tooth and this really helps with that. Also, I say jimmies…
Hi Katie. I just found your blog recently & love your recipes! Is there a way to make the choclate pecan pie soy-free? I’ve been vegan for over twenty years & just recently became soy-intolerant. Thanks!
I just returned from Georgia, where we stopped at a “peekin” store where I thought I might buy some puhcawns for today’s dessert. In southern Georgia they say peekin, I guess, to add to the dialects mentioned. I’m from the south (Both Oklahoma and Florida) and we say puhcawns and sprinkles. When we lived in Massachusetts, it was pea-cans and jimmies – sprinkles were unheard of.
I subbed the pecans for walnuts, and I didn’t have silken-firm,only silken tofu and the batter was really,really runny,like water consistency.
Did your batter turn out like that? Will the pie get firmer in the oven or if it sits?
It will get firmer if you leave it uncovered. But I’ve only tried it with silken-firm, which is much different from silken. So I don’t know if that substitution could work.
Ok thanks!
I used silken, as I couldn’t find “silken-firm”, and my grocery store doesn’t sell mori-nu, which I looked up online and found is a very unique tofu product, sold in proprietary packaging. I cooked it about 10-15 min longer and kept it in the fridge overnight, but it still came out more like a chocolate cream pie with a few nuts mixed in. Everybody loved it after I started calling it “Chocolate Cream Pie” rather than Pecan Pie! It was very much like a traditional pudding pie. Next time I would use just regular “firm” tofu and see what happens, as this one (using regular “silken”) came out less firm than the photos. But it WAS super yummy!
Do you drain your tofu before blending it, or no? Just wondering cause I want to make this for dessert today! Thanks
I don’t, but I use Mori-Nu (and highly recommend it), which is in an aseptic container so there’s nothing to drain.
i say jimmies 🙂
Ok, puh- cahn pie, I’m from the south:) my grandma (from the Delta) had a pee can (chamber pot) we used as a potty during the night to avoid going to the outhouse. Sorry folks but there is no way I could call it a pee can pie. And I reckon you know that I am older than most of you- Hah, I am over using the southern vocabulary.
Hopefully, this wasn’t offensive, d
I am a New Englander, therefore I say Jimmies!
In our area of PA we see pee-can and jimmies!
Any tips for a gluten-free, no/low sugar crust option- recipe or store-bought?
This is the only pie crust I have posted at the moment… but I’m working on a graham cracker one too.
https://lett-trim.today/2012/05/13/ridiculously-easy-chocolate-pie-crust/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Just made this the other day… and wow! It was delish :)) my husband could not believe it was tofu and once I told him, he literally hesitated for 2 seconds and proclaimed “tofu-huh?! gimme more!” LOL. My daughters absolutely loved it as well. Thank you so much