Article from Houston Home Journal-Warner Robins, Georgia Pecans, Pies and Pound Cake
Pearson Farm one of mid-state’s best-kept secrets for holiday shopping By Charlotte Perkins HHJ Lifestyle Editor Wednesday, November 24, 2004
PERRY- If you’re making your list, checking it twice and still wondering what to send to those out-of-state friends and relatives, it’s time to take a ride out to Pearson Farm on U.S. 341, and check out the praline pecans, the cinnamon pecans, the chocolate-covered pecans, the pecan pies and all the other treats ready for gift boxes and gift baskets.
You can smell the pecan pies and pound cakes baking while you browse, because “home cooking” is still the standard here.
Mary Pearson explains that the pecan pies, made by a secret family recipe, are put together and baked eight at a time, 44 a day.
The whipping cream pound cake are turned out the same way, a few at a time, in bundt pans. For drop-in shoppers, Pearson Farm is one of the best-kept culinary secretes in Middle Georgia. But their goodies, based mostly on peaches in the summer and pecans in the fall, are building a nationwide reputation for corporate giving. They’ve even been featured in The New York Times.
Elliot-pecans from the Pearson family’s pecan groves in Houston, Peach, Macon and Crawford counties, are shipped out across the country, in the shell and by halves, baked into cakes and pies, toasted with savory, sweet or spice glazes.
Georgia pecan prices will be high this year. According to Al Pearson, the family’s pecan trees took a real beating from September hurricanes, and a thousand trees were lost, including some that his grandfather planted. The cost of clean-up was high, too, but Pearson is philosophical about the chances involved growing peaches and pe3cans. “We’ve had bad crops before,” he says, snitching a cinnamon spice pecan from a big pan in the kitchen. “I was born into it.”
While Mary Pearson can’t be talked out of the Pearson Farm recipe for pecan pie, which one HHJ taste-tester called “The best I’ve ever tasted,’ she did share some other tasty pecan recipes, and we’ve added still another from the Georgia Pecan Commission.