I saved one of my all time favorites for last. If the sticky toffee cookie is my new favorite cozy sweater, tassies are my well-loved wrap dress that I wear just as often out to a fancy dinner as I do to the grocery store. This recipe doesn’t veer too far from Grandma Ruby’s, but I did gild the lily a bit by adding chopped chocolate.
My family used to double and sometimes triple this recipe because they’re so small and snackable. If you’re making twelve other varieties of cookies, that might not be necessary, but if you’re only making one? I don’t think you’d have complaints having some extras around the house.
This is it! I’ve shared a dozen recipes with you this month for some cookies that I am extremely proud of. I hope you’ve enjoyed this little project as much as I have. Thanks for being here and reading along and sending me messages when I forget to include entire ingredients in recipes—it’s all part of the chaos that I was looking for, and I’m so grateful to get to do it.
I’d still love to hear from you as you take on some of the recipes! In the meantime, happy holidays & lots of love to you <3
PECAN TASSIES with CHOCOLATE
Makes 24 tassies
Crust:
3 oz cream cheese, room temperature
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup all-purpose flour
Filling:
1 ½ cups dark brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tablespoons brown butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chopped, toasted pecans
2 oz. chopped chocolate
Flaky sea salt, to garnish
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly spray a 24-mini muffin pan.
Make the crust:
In a medium-sized mixing bowl, combine the cream cheese and butter. You can do this pretty easily by hand, but I’ve been struggling with some pregnancy carpal tunnel, so I used my hand mixer at low speed.
Once well-combined, add the flour and mix until a dough forms. It’ll be a wet-ish dough, kind of sticky, but it’s supposed to be! Set aside.
Make the filling:
In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the sugar and eggs. Definitely do this by hand! Add the butter and vanilla until just combined. Add the pecans, again, whisking just to combine, and that’s it. That’s the filling!
Now, we’re going to divide the dough into 24 little balls and press them into the muffin tins. This is the most laborious part, but it’s also kind of fun. It’s like playing with Play-doh. I didn’t measure the dough, but I’d guess it’s about 2 teaspoons per tassie. Use your fingers to press the dough into little tiny pie shapes in each of the muffin holes. If it’s too sticky for you, you can dip your fingers into flour to help. They should pretty easily climb the sides and sit flush with the top of the pan. Make sense? You’re making tiny pies!
Once you have all of your shells prepared, divide the chopped chocolate between all the shells. Again, I didn’t measure this, so I encourage you to also not stress too much about it. I just tried to coat the bottom in chocolate-y bits and took from some of the heavy-handed ones when I ran out of chocolate for the final two.
Now, run your whisk through the filling once more to get the sugar that has definitely settled on the bottom reincorporated. I used a gravy spoon to pour filling into each of the tassies. You can fill each nearly all the way to the top, so be generous. Again, I didn’t measure…this is an old-fashioned recipe, what can I say!
Once all of the tassies are filled, bake these for 25-35 minutes (this will depend on how full yours are), until the tops start to crack open a bit and the edges turn golden brown.
While they’re warm, sprinkle a little flaky sea salt—or don’t if that’s not your thing, I don’t care. These are incredible warm and absolutely delightful at room temperature for the next week.
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