Maple Walnut Pie

Maple Walnut Pie is perfect for celebration meals.  Make one for your next Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. 

What could be better together than maple syrup and walnuts?  I remember maple walnut ice cream.  Big chunks of walnuts in a creamy maple ice cream.  You can still get it but it's not as good.  Less walnuts and more artificial flavours in the ice cream.  Is that really true? Or has memory taken over my taste buds? Ha, ha!  I still love maple walnut anything so I was excited to make this pie.  It started out as a pecan pie and evolved over the weeks into this lovely creation.  

With Thanksgiving right around the corner I wanted to bake this Maple Walnut Pie so I got on my mask and hit the stores to buy the necessary ingredients for this decadent treat. The one ingredient I thought I'd have no trouble finding proved to be the hardest to find--walnuts!  I could find them but they were outrageously expensive at one store and were chopped too fine (and looked a bit shriveled) at another.  I made the trek to town and finally found what I wanted at a more reasonable price.  I also wanted to use dark or amber maple syrup in the pie and found it with no difficulty at all.  If you can't find the dark syrup use whatever you can find in your area.  

A word of warning about walnuts: make sure they are fresh.  Stale walnuts have a nasty bitter taste because the walnut oil has gone rancid.  Yuck!  Fresh walnuts have a sweet nutty aroma and taste with only a slight bitterness from the skins that is hardly discernable once baked in a sweet pie. 

Printable recipe at end of post.

Maple Walnut Pie

• 3 eggs, well beaten
• ½ cup brown sugar, firmly packed
• 2 tablespoons melted butter
• Pinch salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup dark maple syrup 
• 1½ cups walnuts, roughly chopped
• 1 9-inch unbaked pie shell* (may blind bake if preferred) 

How to make it:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Beat the eggs, brown sugar, butter, salt and vanilla together making sure there are no lumps of brown sugar left in the mixture.  Stir in the maple syrup and walnuts.  Pour into the prepared pie shell. I blind baked mine to make sure there were no soggy bottoms. 

Bake 20 minutes at 400 degrees; reduce heat to 325 degrees and bake 35-45 minutes longer or until filling is set. There should be a slight wobble in the centre. If you want a firmer pie bake a few minutes longer. Remove from oven and let cool to room temperature.  Chill if desired.  Serve with whipped cream or ice cream

Makes 8 servings.

*Recipes for pie crust can be found here, here and here.

All the necessary ingredients assembled for the pie.  

Beat the eggs, brown sugar, butter, salt and vanilla together making sure there are no lumps of brown sugar left in the mixture.  

Stir in the maple syrup. . . 

and the walnuts.

Pour the mixture into the prepared pie shell.  I prebaked my pie crust to ensure there was no soggy bottom but if your oven does a great job baking pies an unbaked pie crust should be fine.  

Bake 20 minutes at 400 degrees; reduce heat to 325 degrees and bake 35-45 minutes longer or until filling is set. There should be a slight wobble in the centre. If you want a firmer pie bake a few minutes longer. Remove from oven and let cool to room temperature. 

I had a few scraps of pastry left so I cut out a few leaf shapes to decorate the edge of the pie.  

You may be able to see the layers of pastry on the leaves.  I used Aunt Amy's No Fail Pie Crust using half shortening and half butter. 

Maple Walnut Pie--Sweet, crunchy and delicious!

To print click on arrow upper right side.⇩