Easy Christmas Cookie: Pecan Pie Bars

You know how you love pecan pie but a whole piece feels like way too many calories and overdoing the richness. These little pecan pie bars are easy to make, rich, yes, (but only three bites), and deliciously-sweet-tooth-satisfying.

In the busy days of December, keep these ingredients on hand so you can whip up a quick and scrumptious dessert for that dish of cookies you’re supposed to take to work, to an after-caroling party, for youth group, for the club meeting at school your kid forgot to tell you about. Or to dress up and round out a soup and sandwich meal. And since this is December and time is at a premium, on to the recipe. I tried it twice,* first with white corn syrup since the recipe I had did not indicate, and the second time with dark. We liked the dark 25 percent better! (Both were good.)

I saw these first on Facebook and copied it from there. There are plenty of pecan bar type cookies online but I couldn’t find any links for one taking the easy way out by using canned dough.

Pecan Pie Bars

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

1 can crescent rolls
½ cup chopped pecans
½ cup sugar
½ cup dark* corn syrup
2 Tablespoons butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg, beaten

Unroll dough into ungreased 9 x 11 pan. Pinch dough pieces together, and press ¼ inch of dough for a slight edge around the dough. Bake for 8 minutes at 350 degrees.

What rolled out crust pinched together and baked looks like. I did better on my 2nd try.

While that bakes, mix top layer of all the remaining ingredients. When crust has baked 8 minutes, remove from oven and pour pecan/sugar etc. mixture over partially baked crust. Bake 18-20 minutes more until golden. Cool completely, about one hour. Cut into bars. If you taste them earlier, the hot sugar/syrup can easily burn your tongue.

Let them cool one hour.

* I’ve made these twice. The first time I used light corn syrup, since the recipe did not indicate. They didn’t quite have the nice molasses-y flavor I like in my pecan pie. The second time I used dark. Bingo. Real molasses are too strong for me (except in certain recipes asking for them) but the dark corn syrup worked fine.

***

Do you have a quick and easy go-to recipe for something great and good for the Christmas season? I’d love to see links!

***

My book, Whatever Happened to Dinner has over 100 recipes including at least 9 Christmas-type goodies, such as a cheese ball, holiday punch, cranberry orange bread, Christmas morning French toast, peanut butter popcorn balls, Jodi’s best gingerbread recipe ever, magic cookie bars, snowball cookies and more.