So, you’ve made your Thanksgiving Day pecan pies, right?  Now it’s time to take them to a whole new level of delicious.

Scrape the whole pie– yup, crust and all, into a bowl, mash it up a bit and pop it into the freezer for 2 hours.  Then, the caramelly yummy delish will have firmed up and you can shape them into golf size pecan pie balls.  Don’t put the balls in your mouth yet!  Umm, I just said that.  I digress.  Put the pecan pie balls back in the freezer while you melt your chocolate.  You can get those little cups of melting chocolate in the baking aisle of the grocery store and melt it in the microwave.

Set down some parchment or wax paper, then using a spoon, dip the pecan pie balls into the chocolate.  The melting chocolate dries quickly, so if you want to put a single salted pecan on each chocolate ball, do it within 30 seconds of plunking it on the paper.  Let dry and then bite into the best piece of pie you’ve ever tasted. The combo of chocolate with the pecan caramel melt-in-your-mouth-with-buttery-crust….

I. DIE.

If you need to start from scratch and bake a pecan pie, Grandma Ronnie’s recipe is a show-stopper.

Ingredients

1/3 cup butter softened to room temperature plus 1 Tb

3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar

3 eggs

1 c. light corn syrup

1 1/2 heaping cups pecans + more for decorating

1 Tb vanilla

1/4 tsp salt

Directions:  Preheat oven to 425.  Line a 9-inch pie pan with pie crust.  Put 1 Tb butter in a frying pan and melt it on medium heat.  Toss in the 1 1/2 cups pecans and toast them in the butter– 5 minutes or so.

Filling: Cream butter and brown sugar.  Beat in eggs one at a time.  Stir in corn syrup, pecans, vanilla and salt.  Fill the shell.  *Bake at 425 for 10 minutes, then bake an additional 35-40 minutes at 350.

*Sometimes it takes my oven 50 minutes to cook the center of the pie. Keep an eye on it— it will congeal more once it comes out of the oven.

Happy Thanksgiving, y’all!

Gobble, gobble up the chocolate dipped pecan pie balls!