I’m Having This Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie At Every Holiday Meal

There are two truths about holiday meals that more people need to abide by: it’s only called “stuffing” if it’s stuffed inside the bird, and pumpkin pie is infinitely inferior to pecan pie. What hippie decided squash belonged on the dessert table? I bet you’ve never seen a cucumber pie, and there’s a reason for that.

It’s hard to mess up a traditional pecan pie, but like most things, the humble American pecan pie can be enhanced by chocolate and alcohol. Like pecans, the cocoa bean and bourbon whiskey are gifts from the New World to the Old, and they go together like pilgrims and (friendly) Indians.

I wish I could tell you my chocolate bourbon pecan pie was an old family recipe passed down for generations, one that was only saved for posterity because it was tucked away in the family silver my ancestors once hid in a well to evade Yankee soldiers. (The silver part is true, but unfortunately for this article, as far as I know, no pecan pie recipes were involved.)

But if it wasn’t handed down from generations past, it comes from the next best source: namely, Southern Living Magazine, which might as well have been part of the family for the number of hours I used to spend with it in my grandmother’s living room.

(There was always a pile of them on her coffee table, and I devoured the Rick Bragg columns on the back page in particular. I still think about his 2011 column on the art of piddling, which apparently has alternative meanings outside the South. I discovered this when I announced to my college roommate that I was going to sit on my bed and piddle, and she looked at me like I had completely lost my mind.)

Anyway, you can find the recipe here. Every review on Southern Living’s website rates it five stars, except one person who gave it four because it was “very rich,” which is obviously even more of an endorsement. As other reviewers note, you can use yellow cornmeal instead of white, and you won’t notice a difference; one reviewer used grits.

For years, this pie was the annual exception to my mother’s crusade against corn syrup — it calls for half a bottle — but this year she tells me she wants to try maple syrup instead. (If you try that before Christmas, would you please let me know in the comments how it turns out?)

I think we initially discovered the recipe when my brother went through a childhood phase of wanting to be a chef. He parted peacefully with that dream, which is more than we were willing to do with the pie, so the family has demanded he make it every year since.

But I’m too impatient to wait until Christmas, so the pie will also be my contribution to Thanksgiving dinner with my husband’s family this year. I brought it last week to a Friendsgiving dinner, where it disappeared noticeably faster than the pumpkin pie, which is less a testament to my skills than it is to my above thesis.

If you make one dessert this year, first of all, what’s wrong with you? But second of all, make it this one. And start by making it for Thanksgiving, so everyone can ask you to make another one for Christmas.

Elle Purnell is the assignment editor at The Federalist. She has appeared on Fox Business and Newsmax, and her work has been featured by RealClearPolitics, the Tampa Bay Times, and the Independent Women’s Forum. She received her B.A. in government with a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @_ellepurnell.