If you have a slow cooker at home, what do you typically use it for? For most of us, the slow cooker is an easy way to prepare a dinner that will be ready for us as soon as we get home from work. All we have to do is look up a simple recipe, throw everything in, set it and forget it. Without a doubt, slow cookers are one of the most-beloved kitchen tools because they make our life easier and lead to very little clean-up. But we often don’t use them in all the ways that we could.
While slow cookers are great for making dinners and fun party snacks, the truth is they can make almost anything you could make in an oven if you’re creative enough. More specifically, they can make delicious desserts that would otherwise take a significant amount of effort—even a homemade pie! Although it’s usually a speciality that we eat only on Thanksgiving, pecan pie is incredibly underrated. If you like your sweetness with a little of nutty savoriness, pecan pie is sure to hit the spot—which is why we’re going to show you how to slow cook it with very little effort.
Here’s what you’ll need:
- 15 ounces of pie dough (homemade or store-bought)
- 3 eggs
- 1 cup of granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup of light brown sugar
- 8 tablespoons of melted butter
- 1/4 teaspoon of salt
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
- 2 cups of chopped pecans
Here’s what you do:
1. Before you get started, you’ll want to spray the bottom of your slow cooker with some non-stick spray or butter to stop your ingredients from sticking and to keep the clean-up process easy. After that, get out your pie dough (if making your own dough, be sure to make it and refrigerate it before starting). Roll your dough out and press it into the bottom of the slow cooker and up around the sides.
2. Next, get a bowl and mix together your sugar, brown sugar, melted butter, vanilla, eggs and salt along with a handful of chopped pecans. Make sure everything is well-incorporated and spread it evenly around your pie dough.
3. When you’re satisfied, sprinkle the rest of your pecans on top of the pie filling and cover up your slow cooker. Set it on low for three hours and let it cook. Once the time is up, check to make sure that the crust has cooked through to be sure it’s done! If it is, don’t worry about transferring the pie out of the slow cooker—just unplug and serve it hot right out of the bottom.
As you can see, the uses we have for our slow cookers are virtually endless if we’re inventive enough. For maximum enjoyment, be sure to have a tub of vanilla ice cream on hand when you serve this pie as well as it goes together perfectly. Though this recipe is for pecan pie specifically, the instructions are essentially the same for any pie filling you might care to make—simply press in some dough, fill it with mix and in a few hours you’ll be good to go.
While this recipe tastes great as it is, you can also add a little bit of extra spice to it if you’d like—try putting 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon and some nutmeg in the batter! Above all, have fun making this and enjoy!
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