Table 7: Amidst the Holidays

These days between Christmas and New Years is one of my favorite times of the year. The Christmas stress is over, I have no pressing matters to attend to, and it's cold enough outside that I can excuse myself from the public sphere and wallow in all my new stuff (such as this from my brother George and this from my brother Beau, not to mention the amazing photo studio from my parents! Are you guys ready for consistently decent photos? I sure am). Of course, the entire week before Christmas was spent making candy and baking for family and friends, but I'll save those details for the next few entries. In the meantime, I bring you something I made before the holiday insanity ensued: Pecan Tassies. They're like tiny little pecan pies (but even more delicious, in my opinion), and my mom and I used to make them all the time when I was little. In the past few years, however, they seem to have fallen to the back burner and I felt it was time to bring them up again.

Pecan Tassies
Recipe from this deliciously odd blog.

Crust:
1 3oz package cream cheese
1/2 cup butter
1 cup flour

Blend cream cheese, butter and flour until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Bring together with hands until just combined, and sticks together. Divide dough into two equal portions and roll into 12 inch logs. Refrigerate wrapped in plastic wrap. While the dough is chilling, make the filling (rhyme brought to you by the original poster).

Filling:
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
dash of salt
2 tablespoons butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
2/3 cup chopped pecans

Grease and flour a 24 cup mini-muffin pan. Unwrap logs of dough and cut each log into 12 equal pieces. Roll each piece of dough into a ball and put into a muffin cup. Using the "pusher" tool from a meat grinder or a pestle (or something that is shaped like one of those things), press the dough into each muffin cup until it comes up the sides to the top of the cup. (The original recipe poster has really good pictures of this process in case my extremely clear instructions are confusing.) Make sure you dip the end of the pusher/pestle in flour before pressing each ball of dough- otherwise, the dough will stick to the tool and it is annoyingly persistent and difficult to remove. Once all the balls of dough are pushed into the shapes of tiny pie crusts, set aside.

Preheat oven to 325.
Beat butter and brown sugar together until well combined. Add eggs, vanilla and salt and beat until creamy. Place half the nuts on the bottom of each tassie cup, then top each with 1 teaspoon filling, followed by remaining nuts. Bake at 325F for 25 minutes, or until golden brown.