This holiday season I wound up baking like I’ve never baked before in my life. Having been spared the duties of preparing the Christmas meal, I was instead enjoined to provide dessert, and baked goodies for the inevitable extended family visits over the week to come.

Now I’m not usually one for baking. It hasn’t, in the past, held for me the same dangerous thrill of experimentation and adventure that comes with creating or adapting a savory sauce or frolicking through the world of herbs and spices. For me, it’s always been too rigidly correct; too “Pass or Fail”, if you will. After all, if you have a slightly questionable gas oven as I do, you can still rescue a roast, but a pie gone wrong is only ever going to be a pie gone wrong. Add to that the depressing prospect of a kitchen and cook liberally dusted with damp flour, and the thought of baking goes right out the window for me.

So it’s been with an almost unreasonable seasoning of joy that I have found myself with a pie that not only pleases those I feed, but gets requested in advance. It’s a pecan pie, and perhaps not entirely Christmassy, but my sister demands it at Thanksgiving and Christmas every year, and it has even made converts of those previously opposed to the very idea of a nut pie.

It comes courtesy of an absolutely wonderful cookbook I found in a charity shop years ago. The book is called “Louisiana Legacy,” and was published in the early 1980′s by the Thibodeaux Service League, which is all the recommendation I need. Not only does it contain the recipe for Old Fashioned Pecan Pie that I have adapted here, but there are recipes for alligator, rabbit, woodcock, and- perhaps unsurprisingly- more recipes for shrimp and crawfish than you can shake a spatula at.

So here, with grateful thanks to The Thibodeaux Service League, is my adapted recipe for Old Fashioned Pecan Pie. I’ve adapted it because I’ve had to; living in the UK does bring its compromises.

You will need:

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 4 tablespoons butter, softened
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 3/4 cup light corn syrup
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• a healthy dash of salt
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• 1 9 inch unbaked pie crust (I always use the Graham Cracker store-bought ones, as I’m not yet au fait enough with pastry to attempt one myself. If you are, then Bon Chance!)
• 1 cup pecan halves (or enough to cover the pie)

Beat together sugar and butter until smooth, then beat in eggs, flour, syrup, vanilla and salt, mixing well all the time. Fold in the chopped pecans, and pour into the pie crust. Cover the top with the pecan halves, so you cover it completely- or even prettily, if you’re that way inclined with nuts.

Then bake in a pre-heated oven at either 375 degrees Fahrenheit (190 centigrade or Gas Mark 5) for 40 minutes, or 350 degrees F (175 C, or Gas Mark 4) for about 55 minutes, depending on your oven. What you want to find is that the pie has a bit of bounce and spring in the middle- like Jello- but doesn’t actually feel liquid when you tap the center. It will firm up as it cools, but if you take it out too early, it will just sludge out all over the place when you slice it. Either way, you’ll probably still find that the pecans on top are a little on the burnt side of toasty. Fear not; this is actually as it should be, and actually that slightly charred taste counters what can be a sometimes overwhelmingly sweet and rich pie.