Salted Caramel Maple Pecan Pie Bars

Tommy's birthday — forty-one, already covered in an earlier entry. But this week I want to talk about the pit. Six years of the brick pit. Six years of ribs and brisket and whole hogs and the slow accumulation of char and memory on the grate that Pierre welded in 2016. The pit has cooked approximately 200 meals. That's a rough count — four meals per month, twelve months per year, six years. Two hundred meals from one brick structure that I built with my hands and patched with my mortar and tended with my wood and smoke. The pit is a diary. The pit is a calendar. Every crack and stain tells a story. The black on the inside walls is the sediment of six years of oak and pecan smoke. The chips in the bricks are from the time Rémy knocked a log against the chimney. The stain on the side shelf is from the Fourth of July brisket that dripped for fourteen hours. The pit is my other journal. The pit writes in smoke.

Made ribs to celebrate the pit-iversary. Spare ribs, rubbed with Cajun seasoning, smoked for six hours over pecan. The bark was black and crispy and the meat was pink and tender and the pit delivered, the way it always delivers, the way a tool that you built with your own hands and tended for six years delivers: personally, completely, with the intimacy of a thing that knows your technique because your technique built it.

After six hours of pecan smoke rolling through the pit and six years of meals logged into those black walls, I wanted the pecan to carry all the way through the meal — not just in the wood, but in the finish. These salted caramel maple pecan pie bars were the obvious call: same nut, different form, same unhurried richness. The pit feeds you slowly and so does a good dessert. It felt right to let the thing that flavored the smoke also close the table.

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 40 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour | Servings: 16 bars

Ingredients

Shortbread Crust
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold and cubed
Pecan Filling
2 cups pecan halves, roughly chopped
1/2 cup pure maple syrup
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup heavy cream
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon flaky sea salt, plus more for topping

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Preheat your oven to 350°F. Line a 9x13-inch baking pan with parchment paper, leaving an overhang on two sides for easy lifting.
Make the crust. Whisk flour, powdered sugar, and fine sea salt together in a bowl. Cut in the cold butter using a pastry cutter or your fingertips until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Press evenly into the bottom of the prepared pan.
Blind bake the crust. Bake for 15 minutes, until the crust is lightly golden at the edges. Remove and let cool for 5 minutes while you prepare the filling.
Build the caramel filling. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, combine maple syrup, brown sugar, heavy cream, and butter. Stir until the butter melts and the mixture is smooth. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook for 2 minutes, then remove from heat and let cool for 5 minutes.
Finish the filling. Whisk the beaten eggs, vanilla, and flaky sea salt into the cooled caramel mixture. Fold in the chopped pecans until evenly coated.
Fill and bake. Pour the pecan filling evenly over the warm crust. Sprinkle additional flaky sea salt across the top. Bake for 22–25 minutes, until the filling is set at the edges but has a slight jiggle at the center.
Cool completely before cutting. Let the bars cool in the pan for at least 1 hour at room temperature, then refrigerate for 30 minutes before lifting out and slicing into 16 bars. Cutting warm will cause the filling to run.

Nutrition (per serving)

Salted Caramel Maple Pecan Pie Bars — The Pecan Goes All the Way Through