Pecan Tassies – Quick & Easy

A few months ago I came across a video recipe for Pecan Tassies. I hadn’t heard of tassies before but these caught my attention. I made a note to try them as a potential treat at Christmas.

They are little tarts in a nice rich pastry. For mine I included some pecans in the pastry too, which certainly gave a more nutty flavour.

I checked quite a few recipes and decided to combine elements from two or three to make my Pecan Tassies. In the video of the recipe I demonstrate the method using 200g of sugar. However I had more mixture than I needed for the amount of pastry. So in the recipe below I have reduced the amount of sugar, which will make slightly less filling but without detracting from the wonderful flavour.

Made in a mini muffin pan these little tarts work very well indeed. They are ideal little two-bite treats that would be perfect at Christmas as a small, sweet, treat.

The recipe is actually very easy to make and it doesn’t take long either. In fact they can be out of the oven and ready to eat within an hour if required. The pastry uses ground pecans, which can be created with a food processor or an immersion blender.

My Pecan Tassies turned out very well indeed, with a lovely pastry and that sweet and nutty filling.

Other sweet treats for Christmas are Mince Pies.

Pecan Tassies – Quick & Easy

Recipe by geoffcooCourse: Christmas, PastriesDifficulty: Easy

Servings

24

servings

Prep time

20

minutes

Cooking time

20

minutes

Ingredients

• Pastry

• 100g(1 cup) ground pecans

• 100g(7 tbsp) cream cheese

• 100g(7 tbsp) softened unsalted butter

• 110g(2/3 cup+ 1 tbsp) plain flour, based on scooping packed flour into a 250ml cup)plain flour

• 25g(2 tbsp) caster sugar

• pinch of salt

• Filling

• 2 medium eggs(large in USA)

• 100g(1/2 packed cup) light brown sugar

• 28g(2 tbsp) melted unsalted butter

• 5ml(1 tsp) vanilla extract
  75g(3/4 cup) roughly chopped pecans

Directions

• Cream the butter and cream cheese together.
• Add the flour, caster sugar, salt and ground pecans and mix until fully combined into a very sticky dough.
• Spoon equal amounts of the dough to each hole of a mini muffin tin.
• Press the dough, using a floured finger or a tamper, to line the base and sides of each hole, making a cup.
• Chill the pastry in the fridge for 30 minutes.
• Preheat the oven to 190C/170C Fan/375F.
• Bake the pastry cases for 5 minutes, then remove from the oven and tamp down the bases of each hole if they have risen.
• In a large bowl beat the eggs, melted butter, light brown sugar and vanilla extract until fully combined.
• Spoon the mixture into the pastry cases, filling about 2/3 full.
• Place about 3g/ 1 tsp of chopped pecans onto top of each filled case.
• Bake in the oven for 18 to 20 minutes, until the pastry has fully baked and colour. The filling should rise (but will sink a little whilst cooling).
• Remove from the oven and leave for a few minutes then carefully transfer the tassies to a wire rack to cool.