Pecan Tassies

We were going to a party and were asked to bring a  finger food to share.  Of course I wanted to bring a dessert.

Cookies seemed  like the logical choice but I didn’t want to bring just cookies, I wanted to bring something a bit more.   So, I went through my ‘cookbooks’  and decided that the dessert section would be a good start.   I picked out a few possibilities but then I thought of the Pecan Tassies.  The recipe was given to me by my older sister who made them frequently for gifts and when they had company.  Perfect.  Now I had to figure out where they were in my cookbooks because they weren’t in the dessert or pie sections.

I finally found them in with the cookies, under ‘other’.  Not sure whether that was the proper filing but there they were!  They were in between two other ‘lost recipes’ that I had made long ago:  Date Filled Cookies and Hahas (an Armenian cookie), so much to share!  Anyway, back to Pecan Tassies.  They seemed perfect, so I ventured to give them a try.

Pecan Tassies

1, 3 ounce package cream cheese

1/2 cup butter

1 cup flour

1 egg

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 tablespoon of soft butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

2/3 cup finely chopped pecans

Cheese Pastry:  put butter and cream cheese in a mixer and mix together until creamy.  Add flour slowly until thoroughly combined.  It will seem kind of craggy but that’s ok.  Put in a glass bowl, cover with plastic wrap and keep in refrigerator until finished with the filling.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Pecan Filling: combine egg, brown sugar, butter, vanilla  and beat with mixer until very smooth.  Fold in finely chopped pecans (I took chopped pecans and chopped them a bit more in the mini- prep).

Take out pastry and shape small 1/2 ounce pieces into ~  one inch balls.  Shape all the pastry into balls to make sure that you use all the pastry evenly.  Place balls into a  Mini Muffin Pan (this is what I bought at Kohl’s.  Anything similar is fine) and press balls into each mini cup.

Place a little more than one teaspoon of filling into each cup.  Bake for 20 minutes until golden brown and the filling is slightly puffy.

Cream Cheese Pastry:

Filling:

Rolling pastry into balls and pressing into cups:

All filled and ready to go in the oven:

Just out of the oven (hmm, one is missing!):

Yum! Turned out to be a big hit with my husband and son.  Hope it works at the Party!

p.s.  They were a success!