Best Pecan Pie

“My mom makes it around this time every year, and it is delicious,” says Sarah Jacobson, a West Junior High School ninth-grader, who submitted this pecan pie recipe. “She’s even won a prize.”

Ingredients:

1/3 cup butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

3 eggs

1 cup light corn syrup

1 cup chopped pecans

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

Pie crust, see below

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

Cream butter until light and fluffy; gradually add sugar, beating after each addition. Add eggs one at a time to butter and sugar mixture. Add remaining ingredients one at a time, in order listed.

Fill uncooked pie shell with filling mixture. Bake at 375 degrees for 40 to 50 minutes. Allow to cool thoroughly before serving.

Pie crust, single layer

Ingredients:

1 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

6 1/3 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons water

Mix flour and salt. Add butter and cut in with pastry blender. Sprinkle with 2 tablespoons water. Mix with fork and gather dough together and press firmly into a ball. Roll out onto floured wax paper and place into pie plate.

— Sarah is a member of Angle, the Journal-World’s teen advisory board.

Chocolate turtles

Katie Rorick, an eighth-grader at West Junior High School, submitted this recipe. They only take about 10 minutes, and “they’re insanely easy,” she said.

Ingredients: Rolos, mini pretzels and pecan halves — 1 each per turtle

Preheat oven to 200 degrees

Put mini pretzels on baking sheet. Place 1 Rolo on top of each pretzel. Place in oven for 3-4 minutes or until Rolos are soft. Push 1 pecan half into each softened Rolo. Let cool.

— Katie is a member of Angle, the Journal-World’s teen advisory board.