Fabulous Pecan Bars

Cheri Clotiaux Stringer (originally from The Recipe Hall of Fame Cookbook )

A lady in our church, Karen Nicolaou, brought a similar recipe to a United Methodist Women’s meeting and I thought it was a wonderful bar dessert — very much like eating a pecan pie! I emailed her to get the recipe and when I didn’t hear back from her, I started looking in my favorite cookbooks to see if I could find one that might be it. I think this is it and if not, it’s very similar. (Nov 2010)

Crust
1/2 cup cold butter
1 1/2 cups flour
1/4 cup ice water

Filling
1 1/2 cups packed light brown sugar
1 cup butter
1/2 cup honey
1/3 cup sugar
1 lb pecans, chopped (but not too fine)
1/4 cup whipping cream

Crust: Use a pastry blender to cut butter into the flour. Mixture should resemble cornmeal. Add water and toss with a fork. Gather dough into a ball. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1-2 hours. Butter and flour a 9x13-inch pan. Roll out the dough on floured surface to a 11x15-inch rectangle. Place dough into the prepared pan and let it come up sides about 1 inch. Pierce dough with a fork. Chill while making filling. 

Filling: Preheat oven to 400˚F. Combine brown sugar, butter, honey and sugar in a heavy saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Boil until thick and dark, 3-4 minutes. You must stir constantly. Remove from heat. Stir in pecans and whipping cream. Pour over dough in pan. Bake for 25 minutes. Check after 15 minutes. If Filling is browning too much, reduce oven heat to 375˚F and continue baking. Cool cookies in the pan. Cut into strips.