I’ve already expressed my respect for Rose Levy Beranbaum back when I got her book The Bread Bible. I haven’t had a chance to bake nearly enough of her recipes; a full time job and an unairconditioned kitchen in my old apartment hindered me. However, her science minded approach to classic recipes and her creative variations on those classics has really impressed me. This is why for Brynne’s birthday I decided to get her the The Pie and Pastry Bible.

We tested out this tome a week after it was brought into our home when I decided that I needed a variation on my traditional pecan pie. The pecan pie that I make is slightly nuttier and less sweet than the original The Fannie Farmer recipe. I add an extra egg, double the number of nuts, and give it a pinch of salt to bring out all the flavors. I’ve always enjoyed my revised recipe, but I was in the mood to experiment this week. I wanted to add some spice to pecan pie and I was thinking cayenne.

You probably think I’m crazy now, so let me explain. The combination of dessert with pepper is strange in classic European cuisine, but in Carribean cooking it’s a fairly strong tradition. One of my favorite all time desserts is the scotch bonnet chocolate cake from Carribean Cooking Light (I’m not normally a fan of “light” cookbooks, but this one inserts so much flavor and creativity into hers that it’s well worth hunting down.) As with the scotch bonnet chocolate cake, the hot pepper in many Carribean desserts is paired with chocolate which helps to mellow the heat and add to the complexity of the flavors. My pecan pie recipe does not include chocolate. Fortunately Rose had the perfect recipe for my tinkering: dark chocolate pecan pie.

Following Rose’s recipes is always an exercise in attention to detail that Brynne is much better at than I. Brynne is the type of person who reads recipes through from start to finish before beginning them, who adjusts oven racks, and is willing to spend hours reducing a sauce if that is what is called for. I, on the other hand, take all recipe instructions as suggestions if I even bother to read them at all. I have been known to skip over entire paragraphs of recipes, plow on when measuring spoons have been lost, and continue on with no hesitation when all the numbers are erased from my oven’s temperature dial.

In order to make sure that we ended up with something edible at the end of our labors we made two pies that night. I made my own recipe from memory while Brynne tackled the new recipe by rote. The only change was 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper to the pie Brynne baked.

We debated for a long time over how much pepper should go into the pie. I originally wanted only 1/4 teaspoon while Brynne thought that a whole teaspoon would be better. I doubt that compromise is the best approach to baking in general, but it lead to good results this time. The heat was there, very distinctly, but the chocolate kept it from building up overtime and becoming painful or overwhelming. All in all, I would say that it is an adjustment well worth making. Click here for the recipes for both the Spicy Chocolate Pecan Pie and my Traditional Pecan Pie.