Where my parents live in Sacramento, their house is surrounded by huge walnut trees. The housing development is in what was formerly a commercial walnut orchard. When I was younger, the trees blanketed the neighborhood with shade in the blazing hot valley summers, and in the fall, all of us kids spent weekends picking walnuts. We harvested 500 lbs of walnuts a year, just from our five trees. These days the trees are getting old, two of them are already gone and the other three are just hanging in there, not really producing much. Still, we have a special affinity for walnuts. Growing up, pretty much any recipe calling for pecans we would just substitute walnuts. Which is how I first started making walnut pie. At its simplest, it’s just a pecan pie for which you swap out the pecans for walnuts. But walnuts can be a little more bitter than pecans, so for this particular version, I’ve decided to use a dark maple syrup instead of the more commonly used corn syrup. The sweet maple flavor helps to balance whatever bitter edge the walnuts may have. Like our pecan pie, this walnut maple pie is not overly sweet. I’m quite pleased with it (my parents both call it a winner!) and hope you will be too.

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